Safety is one of the most important things you can do to build trust on your WordPress site. One way to do that is to keep your site safe from SQL injection attacks, which could compromise it and expose your and your users’ valuable data.
You can keep yourself and your site safe in a lot of different ways. It is possible to make your WordPress site safer by taking the right steps, like not using dynamic SQL, using a firewall, encrypting private data, and so on.
Today, we’re going to first show you how to keep yourself safe from SQL injection attacks. After that, we’ll talk about some plugins you can use to make your site even safer. Allow us to begin!
How do you do a SQL Injection Attack?
An SQL injection attack is when bad code is put into fields where people enter data. Even though WordPress has done a lot to protect the core platform from these kinds of attacks, your site may still be at risk.
In fact, any part of your site where people can enter information or content could be at risk. In this group can be contact forms, comment sections, and even quizzes.
Once an attacker gets into your site, they can use malicious code to get into the database and make your site vulnerable. For instance, in 2016, a group of Russian hackers used a simple SQL injection attack to get information about U.S. voters, such as their names, addresses, and even Social Security numbers.
SQL Injection Attack Examples
SQL injection attacks come in a lot of different forms. Hackers can target smaller targets, like personal websites and blogs, or larger ones, like banks.
In the latter scenario, they could modify account balances or transaction histories once they logged in. The bank will have to tell its customers, which can be very bad for its reputation, even after the damage has been fixed.
To see another real-life example of a SQL injection attack at work, just look at the gaming industry. In fact, a lot of SQL injection attacks are aimed at video games, which are one of the biggest and most profitable industries out there.
A report from iThemes WordPress Vulnerability Report says that 9.3% of all security threats in 2021 were SQL injection attacks. Even though cross-site scripting and cross-site forgery requests happened more often, SQLi threats must not be ignored.
Most of the time, forms are used to do WordPress SQL injection. Attackers can use this process against users who send data to a PHP script that has a SQL query in it. If you have a WordPress site, you should make sure it’s as safe as possible to avoid this problem.
10 Ways to Keep WordPress Safe from SQL Injection
It can be scary to think about getting hacked by a WordPress SQL injection attack. You can now protect yourself and your website in a number of ways, which will make you as safe as possible. Here are ten of the best things you can do.
Step 1: Verify the user’s input and remove unnecessary information
Users’ data is one of the easiest ways for hackers to get into your site through a SQL injection attack. Using input validation and filtering for data sent by users can help stop dangerous character injections. For input validation, all you have to do is check any data that a user sends. This data can then be filtered to stop a SQL injection.
Tip 2: Stay away from dynamic SQL
There is a weakness in dynamic SQL because of how it is automated. In contrast to static SQL, the dynamic form of the language creates and runs statements automatically, leaving holes for hackers. There are ways to protect your WordPress site from a SQL injection attack. You can use prepared statements, parameterized queries, or stored procedures.
Step 3: Update and patch often
Regular updates and patches are very important to keep your database safe. It’s easy for hackers to get into your site if you don’t have the latest version of WordPress or if any of your plugins or themes are out of date. That’s why we take care of all of our customers’ core patches and updates. This includes parts that you might not think about but that could let a SQL injection into your database.
Step 4: Set up a safety wall
Building a firewall around your WordPress site is one of the best ways to keep it safe. A firewall is a type of network security that watches and manages the data that comes into your site. It adds another layer of protection against SQL injection attacks. So, as part of our WordPress security solutions, we give you access to the Cloudflare Content Delivery Network (CDN), a firewall, and safe and secure SSL installation.
Step 5: Get rid of database features that aren’t needed.
An SQL injection attack is more likely to happen on a database that has a lot of features. To keep it safe, you might want to normalize your database to get rid of unnecessary data and make your site safer.
Step 6: Limit who can access what.
One more way to protect your databases from a SQL injection is to limit who can access them. This kind of attack can happen quickly on your WordPress site if someone has the wrong access rights.
You might want to go into your WordPress User Roles and limit what other people can see and change to keep your site safe. For instance, to get rid of those possible weaknesses, you could make sure that all former users have been removed from non-subscriber roles like editor or contributor.
Step 7: Protect private information
You can always make your database safer, even if it seems safe now. When you encrypt private data in your databases, you make it safe and stop a SQL injection from getting to that data.
Step 8: Don’t give out any extra details
Hackers can get a lot of information from database error messages, which is a bad thing. This includes things like login information, the email addresses of server administrators, and even some of your own code.
Putting generic messages for errors on a custom HTML page is a good way to keep your site safe. Remember that your WordPress site will be safer if you don’t give out too much information.
Step 9: Keep an eye on SQL statements
You can help find security holes in your WordPress site by keeping an eye on the SQL statements being sent between applications that connect to a database. We have a lot of monitoring tools, but you can also use third-party apps like Stackify and ManageEngine. No matter what solution you use, it can help you figure out what might be wrong with your database.
Step 10: Make your software better
Having systems that are as up to date as possible is important when it comes to SQL injection attacks and hacking in general. By doing this, you can stop the constantly changing ways that people break into websites. So, stopping a breach is not something that can be done just once. Now you don’t have to worry about attacks because we find threats in real time.
Popular Plugins For Preventing SQL Injections
If your plugin or theme is out of date, SQL injection attacks can happen on your WordPress site. However, there are security plugins that can help you stay safe. Giving yourself a break with one of these tools can help you focus on other, more important parts of managing your WordPress site.
1. Use Sucuri Security to stop SQL injections
There is a free version of the popular tool Sucuri Security. That way, you can keep an eye on who changes things on your site and what those changes are.
Once Sucuri is installed, it checks your files for malware, lets you monitor blacklists, and gives you the option to use a firewall. Go to Plugins > Add New to get this plugin. Then, you’ll need to add it to your site.
After that, you can install and turn it on, and then go to the plugin’s dashboard and click on Generate API Key. That will make your event monitoring work.
This key will be used to make sure that HTTP requests are real. After that, you can rest easy knowing that you’ve made your site even safer.
Wordfence Security is a security add-on for WordPress websites that protects against SQL injections, provides Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), and checks for malware, specifically WordPress SQL injections.
It’s easy to download and turn on the plugin. To get the plugin, go to Plugins > Add New and look for Wordfence Security.
Click on Activate when it’s ready. There you have it! The malware scan can begin whenever you want now that it’s up and running.
If you still want to use All In One Security (AIOS), you could do that. In addition to giving you an extra firewall, it also makes it harder for bots to try to sign up as users. The code is kept safe, and any IP addresses that are sending too many 404 errors or phishing for information are blocked.
For the plugin, go to Plugins > Add New and save it. After that, you can activate and set it up.
You can now change the settings for the plugin and set up security on your site. Some features, like “Login Lockdown,” can be turned on and off, and you can see who is logged in to your site.
