So I was browsing some affiliate websites today when I noticed that Kieron’s UKOffer website had been hacked (either that or he was trying super hard to push dodgy drugs!) More specifically his site had fallen foul of some kind of keyword injection promoting the drug phentermine which is an attack that’s rife in wordpress land at the moment.
I tried to post up an entire screen grab but it went on for so long that it’d probably make this blog post look like it’s been hacked!
Obviously the first thing I did was to give Kieron a quick heads up (via Frostie, cheers fella) but it also got me thinking… can this type of attack be prevented or detected automatically?
I use Google Alerts for all types of things, especially for monitoring the brand names of my clients and what websites they pop up on. It’s also a great way to keep up on latest trends or hot products but can it be used to fight these scumbag hax0rz? Hell yeah! And the best bit is it’s really simple.
Head over to Google Alerts or sign into your Google Account.
As your search term add your domain name plus as many trigger words as you like. This must be set up as an advanced search query like so:
site:yourdomain.com viagra OR phentermine OR cialis etc etc
Type : Comprehensive
How often: as-it-happens
Enter Your email.
You should end up with something like this… and your done. Told you it was easy :)
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Just realised I never thanked you for spotting this mate, really appreciate it.
Top tip. It’s so quick to add a Google Alert (unless you run a network of a hundred or so sites…) that everyone should be doing this!
Crafty spammers don’t edit your recent posts, instead going deep for ones you posted weeks, months or even years ago so the chances of you finding that you’ve been compromised is quite slim.
I believe there is an easy way to protect our website. Even hackers use google to hack our website.
This thing about hacking wordpress blogs is becoming a real problem for us affiliate marketers. Problem is the people who are doing this are also affiliate marketers
I wonder what the vulnerability in wordpress is that makes it so susceptible to hackers
And is it going to be resolved soon?
I’ve always been a bit worried about Wordpress security vulnerabilities. Good tip on how to know when it happens to you though – thanks for the advice.
Nice work chief ;-)
Good tip, I might add this for a couple of our Wordpress sites, it’s so important to stay up to date with Wordpress patches and versions, the trouble is if you have Wordpress blogs coming out of your ears then keeping up to date can be very time consuming.