How To Prevent Hackers From Messing Up Your Day

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 7 of April , 2008 at 11:29 pm

The Google Webmaster Blog had a great post today on what to do if your site gets hacked. The first thing you should not do is panic.

There’s no sure fire way to prevent your website from getting hacked, but there are some things that you can do to cut down on the risk of hackers screwing it up for you.

No. 1, use complicated passwords. Don’t use simple one word passwords that contain no capital letters or numbers. Simple passwords are easy to guess and many bots can figure them out in a crunch. Use complicated passwords and write them down in a place where no one else will find them. Keep them secure.

Use the latest edition of your software or CMS system. If your site is built on WordPress, make sure that you are using the latest edition of WordPress. They update often. The same goes for Joomla, Drupal, or any other CMS system. Get the latest update.

If using custom scripts, make sure your input fields are sanitized. That simply means that user input should never be trusted 100%. In order to prevent hacking via way of SQL injection and other technical methods of hacking that require user input, you should employ cookies, session tracking IDs, and hidden fields. These will cut down on your chances of hackers wreaking havoc on your website.

Remember that there is no fail safe way to prevent hacking, but these methods can cut down on any chances of your website being hacked.

Category: Webmaster Tools

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