Having a top-rated website that ranks on the first pages of a search engine is everyone’s dream. Imagine making a website, investing hundreds of dollars for the content and designing, putting effort until it comes to the top of the search results, a most visited website! Life is good.
Plot Twist
You wake up one day and discover that you are no longer the owner of your website; someone has hacked it. It sounds like a nightmare, but this nightmare can come true any day in this century as professional hackers have their high-class agencies. We hear news of even Government websites getting hacked now and then; bank sites are at high risk. What makes you think your website is safe in such a situation? We don’t intend to threaten you; we have come up with a complete plan!
Website Hacking Stats:
Just because none of your friends ever got his website hacked doesn’t mean your website is safe too. Your mind will blow to know that the number of websites hacked daily is less than 30,000. The number of times hackers attack a website was 39 times PER SECOND in 2003. According to a study in 2019, website breaching increased to over 67% in 2014-19. An increase in the cybersecurity budget reveals how it has grown even more in 2022.
Let’s break down the data of hacking incidents responsible for the loss of over $1M+ each.
YEAR |
NUMBER OF CYBER-ATTACK INCIDENTS |
| 2009 | 21 |
| 2010 | 20 |
| 2011 | 25 |
| 2012 | 23 |
| 2013 | 30 |
| 2014 | 25 |
| 2015 | 32 |
| 2016 | 39 |
| 2017 | 66 |
| 2018 | 104 |
| 2019 | 105 |
CSIS revealed these figures, including the hacking of sites related to government agencies and high-tech and defense companies. The number of such attempts has increased considerably over time; it indicates how horrible can be the future of the web world if the proper precaution and measures are not taken.
How can Hackers Misuse this Information?
Hackers can harm a website owner in various ways. The following chart describes the ratio of different types of cybercrime that people faced in 2021 (US):
Website Vulnerabilities:
As the number of websites is increasing daily, they are more prone to hacker attacks. Getting into someone’s website and making desired changes is easier for a hacker than ever. Not only can they overcome the website, but terrorists can use them for malignant goals, ultimately putting the owner at risk of false allegations. Websites are more vulnerable because of the following reasons:
Broken authentication:
Poor authorization and web session management functions are mainly responsible for broken authentication. This factor allows the hacker to take over one or more accounts as they can go through the not-so-secure boundaries of passwords, account information, and the owner’s personal information. It happens in the case of non-encrypted passwords, predictable session ids, predictable login details, session ids included in the URL, etc.
Security misconfiguration:
These vulnerabilities lie in the software components because of either misconfiguration or insecure configuration. The developer doesn’t entirely and adequately define the configuration. Whether because of laziness or lack of skill, this lack in the configuration cloud may cause the loss of millions of dollars. Security misconfiguration may occur by running multiple services on the machine, enabling directory listing on the server, keeping default keys and passwords as it is, etc.
Sensitive data exposure:
Attacks via sensitive data exposure are much more likely when the sensitive data is easily accessible to hackers. Their misuse is to gain control of the website. What’s scarier is that they can go on to hack your bank account by gaining access to credit card details. Authentication credentials, medical history, and session tokens are highly vulnerable.
No function level access control:
Function-level access control should be limited to the owner or web specialists; however, sometimes, the loopholes in the configuration allow the users to gain access to the function controls. One can directly settings in the code but doing it correctly demands skill and expertise. Users then access the functions that are supposed to be restricted.
Unfiltered Redirects:
Sometimes, we open a website, click the desired option, and the website redirects us to seemingly malicious sites. Remote hackers use these to redirect users to confiscate their data as well.
What can I do to secure my website?
This question must have been popping up in your mind for a long time, especially if you are not an IT expert. The biggest mistake of a person getting his website made is to trust just anyone to go on with his web development. If you are one of those, stop right away! It is better to pay an extra amount to authorized agencies to protect yourself from more significant losses in the future. We’ll explain it to you in this section.
Hire Trusted Agencies:
Hiring anyone without verifying their skill and credibility might cost you a lot. One has to look for a trusted agency that complies with the PCI making the user data more secure. Such companies take measures and configure the website so that a hacker becomes significantly less likely to breach the data. The skillful and professional web developers are aware of the proper protocol needed to fix, recover, or maintain the integrity of a site. These trusted agencies take the following steps to ensure that the client’s website has no security threats:
- They filter all the input to ensure that it can be trusted.
- They use a framework that evades the possibility of broken authentication.
- They usually don’t get back to clients with HTML tags that prevent the HTML injections from hackers.
- They perform user authorization correctly and double-check it for assurance consistently.
- They have reliable building and deploying processes.
- Reliable developers always get done with authorization from the server-side.
- The secret token must be hidden such that it is inaccessible to a third party. Access to this token must always require verification for further security assurance.
- Trusted agencies know what they are doing. They don’t go on to copy and paste the code. They inspect each piece of code and use the latest versions of the used software and programs.
- They restrict the redirects in any form or fix valid locations for redirects, if necessary.
Takeaway:
The take-home lesson is that one must not rely on cheap ways to develop his website. Spending an extra amount to assure the website’s security can prevent more considerable losses in the future.
We recommend getting your website security double-checked by experts once the website has been developed. Yes, that’s how important it is!
To find out if your website has what it takes against hackers and cybercriminals, feel free to contact us for a free consultation and estimate.