On Thursday this week (yesterday) on Facebook we shared a post by HostGator that reported an “on-going and highly-distributed, global attack on WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence.”
They went on to share “This attack is well organized and again very, very distributed; we have seen over 90,000 IP addresses involved in this attack.”
HostGator is recommending that you log into your WordPress website “and change the password you have to something that meets the security requirements specified on the WordPress website.
These requirements are fairly typical of a secure password: upper and lowercase letters, at least eight characters long, and including “special” characters (^%$#&@*).”
You can do this by following the following steps:
Log in to your WordPress website (the wp-admin site) Dashboard
- Look for the ‘Users’ link located on the left hand side of the Dashboard.
- Click on your Username to edit.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Username information and locate the words ‘New Password’.
- Create a new password that includes upper and lowercase letters, is at least eight characters long, and has at least a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).
- Click ‘Update Profile’.
Other Account Security
While we’re on the topic of security, HostGator recently posted the following additional important information about Account Security:
“Did you know that one of the most common causes for a hosting account to become hacked, or otherwise compromised, is also the most easily preventable cause as well? If you use WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or any other PHP-script, database-driven CMS then it is vitally important that you keep these scripts up-to-date. Failure to do so is literally an open door inviting hackers to gain access to your account. Updating these scripts is as simple as logging into the back-end and clicking on any “update” notification that appears therein.”