A press release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation warns WordPress users to update their plugins or risk defacement from ISIS hackers. So far, the busy hackers have defaced websites belonging to "news organizations, commercial entities, religious institutions, federal/state/local governments, foreign governments, and a variety of other domestic and international Web sites" according to the FBI press release. The FBI believes this to be the work of sympathizers rather than ISIS hackers themselves.

As an example, popular plugins such as Super Cache have reportedly made over a million sites vulnerable to the hackers. 

So once again, our recommendation is to get busy and patch your plugins. The advice from the FBI includes the following helpful tips...

• Review and follow WordPress guidelines: 
  http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
• Identify WordPress vulnerabilities using free available tools such as 
  http://www.securityfocus.com/bid,
  http://cve.mitre.org/index.html, 
  https://www.us-cert.gov/
• Update WordPress by patching vulnerable plugins: 
  https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/patch
• Run all software as a non-privileged user, without administrative privileges, to diminish the effects of a successful attack
• Confirm that the operating system and all applications are running the most updated versions

If you have any questions or need help with a website that won't be vulnerable to such exploits, give us a call at 877.397.7605 or contact 111 Web Studio for more information.