Many of our web hosting clients use our robust Build111 CMS (content management system) for their web sites, but some of you use WordPress as your CMS.

If you are running an older version of WordPress (before the Jan-2013 3.5.1 update), please be aware that your site can be used to run DDoS attacks on other web sites, just as has been done by some 160,000 WordPress sites recently. A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is directed at a web site with the objective of taking it off line. This is done by flooding the web server with requests from thousands of places at once so that it is overwhelmed and cannot respond to valid requests in a timely fashion. Thus, the web site appears for all intents and purposes as if it has gone off-line.

Your WordPress site can be used as an attacker if you have pingbacks enabled on blog posts. This feature is on by default and is designed to allow backlinks to be created automatically when other websites link to a blog post on your WordPress site.

This once again points out the critical importance of keeping up with regular security updates to your web based software. Fortunately for our Build111 and Church111 clients, we do security updates so you don't have to worry about it.

If you have any questions about this or other issues with your 111 Web Studio web hosting, please give us a call at (877) 397-7605 and we'll help you out.