How do I know if my site is hacked?

Every website, regardless of whether it is a simple blog, a portfolio showcase, a small cupcake business, or a dynamic e-commerce platform, is at risk. Alarming as it may sound, this is just the reality. Regardless of the kind and scale of defenses deployed, the website can still be attacked as hackers are constantly unearthing and innovating new ways to orchestrate hacking incidents. If you are consistent in website security checks and proactive about website security, you will be able to minimize the risks and prevent the hacking attempts from turning successful.

“How do hackers decide if my website can be hacked? Is hacking a risk even if we conduct website security checks regularly?” are common questions. In this article, we will help you find answers to these questions and ways to protect your website from being hacked.

How Do Hackers Check If Your Website is Hackable?

Hackers can check if your website is hackable through two broad means:

• Gathering information and insights about the website, its components, and configurations. Using a variety of tools and techniques along with the intelligence gathered to identify loopholes and gaps, and orchestrate the hacking attack.
• Through direct attacks such as brute-force attacks, credential stuffing, etc.

1. Examining Open-Source Web Development Components for Flaws/ Misconfigurations

There is an ever-increasing reliance on open-source code, frameworks, plugins, libraries, themes, and so on in today’s web development practice, where speed, agility, and cost-effectiveness are demanded of developers. Open-source frameworks, libraries, plugins, etc., despite the speed and cost-effectiveness they infuse in web development, are a rich source of vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to orchestrate hacking attempts. Often, open-source code, themes, frameworks, plugins, etc. tend to get abandoned or not be maintained by developers. This means no updates or patches and these outdated/ unpatched components on the website that continue to use them only exacerbate the risks associated.

Hackers spend far greater time, effort, and resources examining code, libraries, themes, etc. for vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations. They try to unearth legacy components and old versions of software, source code from high-risk websites, instances where plugins/ components are simply disabled instead of being removed from the server along with all its files, etc. that provide entry-points to orchestrate attacks.

2. Identifying Server-Side Vulnerabilities

Hackers spend immense amounts of time and effort to frequently determine the web-server types, web-server software, server operating system, etc. through the examination of factors such as:

• IP domain
• General intelligence (listening on social media, tech sites, etc.)
• Session cookie names
• The source code used on web pages
• Server setup security
• Other components of backend technology

Having determined and assessed the backend technology of your website, the hackers use a variety of tools and techniques to identify and exploit vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations. For instance, port scanning tools are used by hackers to identify open ports that serve as gateways to the server and thereon server-side vulnerabilities. Some scanning tools unearth administrative tools that are protected by weak or no passwords.

3. Identifying Client-Side Vulnerabilities

Using readily available tools that enable them to replicate genuine pen-tests, hackers identify known vulnerabilities on the client-side such as SQL Injection vulnerabilities, XSS vulnerabilities, CSRF vulnerabilities and so on that allow them to orchestrate hacks from the client side. Hackers also expend ample time and effort to unearth business logic flaws such as security design flaws, flaws in the enforcement of business logic in transactions and workflows, etc. to hack websites from the client side.

4. Looking for Poor API Security

Like most websites today use APIs to communicate with the backend systems, exploiting poor API security and vulnerabilities present enable hackers to get deep insights about the internal architecture of your website. Indicators of poor API security include:

• Poor credentials
• Broken/ weak access controls
• Accessibility of tokens from query strings, variables, etc.
• Inadequate validation
• Little or no encryption
• Business logic flaws

To gain these insights, hackers deliberately send invalid parameters, illegal requests, etc. to the APIs and examine the error messages that return. These error messages may contain critical information about the system such as database type, configurations, etc. which the hacker can piece together over the course of time and exploit identified vulnerabilities at a later stage.

5. Direct Attacks

Through Brute-force attacks, Credential Stuffing, Token Attacks, and other forms of direct cyber-attacks, the hackers may check if your website is hackable or not. If the attempt is not successful

Ways to Keep Your Website Protected from Hackers

To protect your website from being hacked and prevent hackers from snooping around your website, trying to unearth vulnerabilities, you must have a comprehensive, intelligent, and managed security solution such as AppTrana in place that includes

• An intelligent web application scanner to proactively, effectively,
• and continuously identify vulnerabilities.
• A managed, comprehensive WAF that patches vulnerabilities instantly until fixed and prevents hackers from accessing these.
• The expertise of certified security experts who customize and tune the solution to your specific needs and conduct regular security audits and pen-tests to unearth unknown vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

Conclusion

Businesses, irrespective of their size, nature, and scale, must remember that they are not infallible even when they invest in defenses and check for website safety regularly. Businesses must be proactive and consistent about website security, continually work to minimize security risks, and always be on guard; that is the only way forward.

Stay tuned for more relevant and interesting security updates. Follow Indusface on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn