As a host as well as a developer we see both sides of website security when it comes to attack and defence.
An idea of the level of attacks still taking place, we see a (monthly) report published by security expert Wordfence, WordPress Attack Report.
WordPress Attack Report
This report contains the top 25 attacking IPs for the month and their details. It also includes charts of brute force and complex attack activity for the same period. It includes the top themes and plugins that were attacked, and which countries generated the most attacks for this period.
Keep in mind, Wordfence is a WordPress security expert so it will give you some idea of the issue.
The monthly report clearly shows attacks are not only still occurring but on the increase and to give you some idea, we’re not talking a few, we’re talking ‘millions’ of attacks on a daily basis.
1 IP (31.184.194.90) was responsible for 16.41 million attacks with 2 other IP’s responsible for over 10m attacks.
Brute force attacks made up 72% of total attacks for May 2017, up from 68% in April 2017. Complex attacks accounted for 28%.
Turkey and Ukraine continued to dominate the top 25 list, accounting for 16 of the IPs on the list.
The question we are asked the most often:
Why do they attack web sites?
Keep in mind hackers are targeting millions of web sites at any one time, they are generally after credit card and access to financial institutions like banks.
Once in, bots search the back end looking for credit card details and usernames and passwords.
There are the X-Gen wankers and G-Hardi’s that deface and destroy web sites with messages and alleiance to Allah.
Then there are the hackers that lock a web site down, demanding money in return for unlocking it.
Source
- WordPress Attack Report – Wordfence on June 6, 2017 by Dan Moen
- Attacking WordPress – techniques used to attack and break into WordPress websites
- Best Security Plugin
Conclusion
Yes, you need security
If you use the free version of Wordfence, the offending IP addresses will also be automatically blocked for you within 30 days of our adding them to the IP blacklist.
However, you can add them manually (and permanently) right away by navigating to Wordfence > Blocking in your WP admin dashboard, and then entering the IP addresses one by one in the “You can manually (and permanently) block an IP by entering the address here:” field.