Experiencing the ‘Error Establishing a Database Connection‘ on your WordPress website? This common error indicates that your site is unable to connect to its database, rendering it inaccessible to users — and potentially impacting your visitors, user experience, and sales. In this blog post, we’ll explain what the database connection error means, common reasons for […]
Tag Archives: WordPress Security
How to Find & Fix Japanese SEO Spam
Japanese SEO Spam, also known as “Japanese keyword hack” or “Japanese SEO poisoning,” is a spammy search engine optimization technique used by black hat SEO artists to make a website show up in search engine results for spam keywords in Japanese language when they shouldn’t. In this post, we’ll detail what Japanese SEO spam is, […]
How to Fix “Not Secure” Warnings and SSL Issues in WordPress (8 Steps)
If you own a WordPress website and ever encountered the “Not Secure” warning, you might have worried that visitors would perceive your site as spam or fraudulent. Not only does this warning impact user trust, but it can also affect your site’s SEO because search engines like Google flag sites without an HTTPS (HyperText Transfer […]
WordPress Vulnerability & Patch Roundup August 2023
Vulnerability reports and responsible disclosures are essential for website security awareness and education. Automated attacks targeting known software vulnerabilities are one of the leading causes of website compromises. To help educate website owners on emerging threats to their environments, we’ve compiled a list of important security updates and vulnerability patches for the WordPress ecosystem this […]
Why WordPress Gets Hacked
A question we frequently get from new users as they’re onboarding is: why does WordPress get hacked? Of course, this question makes sense in this context; it’s extremely frustrating to find out that your WordPress website has been compromised and you need to tackle an infection or increase security controls. Surely you’d want to understand […]
From Google DNS to Tech Support Scam Sites: Unmasking the Malware Trail
A vast majority of website malware employ the ever-familiar HTTP/HTTPS protocols for its malicious activities. But, we also periodically confront more interesting hybrid malware leveraging various other internet protocols. For example, malware sending email spam, DDoS tools creating floods of UDP packets, bruteforce tools trying to guess SSH credentials, phishing and credit card skimming malware […]
WordPress Vulnerability & Patch Roundup July 2023
Vulnerability reports and responsible disclosures are essential for website security awareness and education. Automated attacks targeting known software vulnerabilities are one of the leading causes of website compromises. To help educate website owners on emerging threats to their environments, we’ve compiled a list of important security updates and vulnerability patches for the WordPress ecosystem this […]
Malicious Injection Redirects Traffic via Parked Domain
During a recent investigation, our malware remediation team encountered a variant of a common malware injection that has been active since at least 2017. The malware was found hijacking the website’s traffic, redirecting visitors via a parked third-party domain to generate ad revenue. Investigating obfuscated JavaScript Our investigation revealed the following piece of obfuscated JavaScript […]
How to Harden WordPress: A Basic Overview
Out-of-the-box security configurations tend to not be very secure. This is usually true for all software and WordPress is no exception. Best practices suggest you take a few of these steps to harden WordPress and protect your environment against bad bots, brute force, and other automated attacks. For example, the WordPress login page is – […]
New Guide on Secure VPS Configuration
One of the most common problems that we observe among many of our clients is the persistent threat of cross contamination – that is, malware that spreads from one website to another when they are hosted in the same environment. This is particularly common within cPanel environments when add-on domains are used, or within improperly […]
