\u201cWe have a small website\u2014who would even want to target us?\u201d\u2014that\u2019s the most common and costliest mistake. Mass hacking attacks never pick their victims: scanners scan addresses one by one and target those that haven\u2019t been updated. Here\u2019s what to do to avoid getting caught in this scan.<\/p>\n
The pattern is almost always the same. A public vulnerability report appears for a popular plugin\u2014within hours, automated scanners kick in. They scan millions of websites, checking for one thing: whether a vulnerable version is installed. They didn\u2019t search for your site; they found it through a list.<\/p>\n
The second most common cause is password guessing. The bot attempts to log in thousands of times a day from different IP addresses until it guesses the correct password.<\/p>\n