How to Protect Your WordPress Website From SQL Injection Attacks?

by Vipe Team in WordPress Issues; Published on 03.09.2021

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No one likes hackers. They can make the life of any website owner a nightmare, especially if said website owner is running an online business that operates with users’ sensitive personal information. Since hacker attacks are a fact of life, one of the highest priorities you should have when building your site is security.

WordPress website development can be a breeze given the CMS’ user-friendly interface and its many functionalities. However, even our favourite platform can become a victim of a severe hacker attack that can compromise your site’s safety and overall performance. One common attack is called an SQL injection.

SQL injection attacks are a nasty thing that you most definitely don’t want to encounter. Hackers use this type of attack to get their hands on valuable data from your website. The good news is that there are several safety measures you can take to protect yourself and your users from these hacks.

This is why, in today’s article, our WordPress Agency for Development is going to first tell you everything important you need to know about SQL injection attacks and then we’ll show you a few tips you can use to increase your site’s security. So let’s begin and get acquainted with SQL injection attacks. That way we’ll make sure we know exactly what we’re dealing with.

SQL Injection Attacks Explained

You’re probably wondering what does “SQL” stand for? Our WordPress development agency has the answer for you. SQL is an abbreviation for Structured Query Language. WordPress uses this language for your website’s database. This means that it deals with very important information. The dynamic content of your site is dependent on SQL and can’t be generated without it.

As you can already see, SQL is an essential part of any professional WordPress website development. This is why it has become one of the most appealing targets for hackers. Attackers essentially compromise your database servers by writing malicious statements in SQL. These types of hacks work because they’re echoing actual real commands that commonly run on the back end of your website.

There are several entry points for SQL injection attacks. Most often these include:

Login forms;
Sign up forms;
Shopping carts;
Site searches;
Contact forms;
Feedback fields.

As you can see, these are all input fields that can suffer vulnerabilities if they are not properly secured in the process of WordPress website development. If your site is not properly protected, the CMS will use the bad code as a genuine command. And then voila – the hacker will gain access to your data.

Our WordPress Agency for Development warns you that if an attacker gets access to your website’s data, the consequences can be harsh, to say the least. There are a million things that can go wrong. We’re talking about serious issues such as stolen credit card numbers and all kinds of sensitive information. You can even find out that all of your data has been removed from your site. To get it back, you’ll usually be asked to pay a ransom.

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Unfortunately, SQL injection attacks are very common and if you don’t put enough effort into your WordPress website development, you can become a victim of one too. There is actually a pretty logical explanation as to why these types of online threats are so widespread – most websites’ databases are based on SQL.

Also, as you’re probably aware, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world and it uses SQL for its database too. And what do nearly all websites have? Yes, you guessed it – input fields that collect information from their visitors. This means that the majority of sites you visit every single day will have at least one of the SQL injection entry points.

Our WordPress Agency for Development can give you a simple example. Let’s say you have a contact form on your website and that form has a field that requires the user to enter his phone number in. It is very important to make sure that you have set certain criteria in advance regarding what could be written in that particular field.

For example, you can allow only limited numbers to be included and you can set a proper format that should be used. Professional WordPress developers can tell you that if you leave your input field with the option to have any kind of plain text written in it, you risk having to deal with someone who has entered any string of characters that can very well be malicious code too. This is not the way to properly execute a WordPress website development process.

Not only that, but SQL injection attacks are not so hard to perform either. There are numerous SQL Injection tools that are readily available online and they do not require highly technical skills to be used. These tools help hackers easily exploit the SQL injection vulnerability of your website. Thanks to that, they can take over the database server. This is why our WordPress development agency wants to once again stress the importance of striving for the highest security standards when it comes to your own website.

If you neglect your site’s safety, the result can be very unpleasant. You can experience huge monetary losses, your customers’ trust could drop significantly, and in the worst-case scenario, your whole website can disappear – all due to SQL injection attacks. We don’t want you to ever come across this threat so now we’re going to focus on some fairly easy methods you can use to protect your site from SQL injection attacks.

How to Prevent SQL Injection Attacks in WordPress?

We’re not going to sugar-coat this for you – hacking attempts can’t be completely eliminated. However, there are methods in WordPress website development that can minimize the risk of getting hacked. Let’s look at some of the options that will keep you, your visitors and your website protected from SQL injection attacks.

1. Validate or Sanitize Your User-Submitted Data

Validation and sanitization are technical terms and processes that professional WordPress developers are closely familiar with. Experts usually use WordPress core functions to carry out these tasks for their third-party programs.

Hacked WordPress (Malware)

Too bad you’re not an expert, right? Wrong! There is a way around everything and that means that even non-tech savvy users can still implement simplified versions of these procedures to prevent SQL injection attacks.

So let’s begin with validation. This method is used to ensure that when a user writes something in your site’s input fields, it has to match the expected format before processing begins. Put simply, this means that if, for example, you have a registration email input, WordPress won’t validate it if it’s missing the @ symbol.

Our WordPress Agency for Development advises you to apply similar rules for all of the custom fields on your site. This can usually be done by using a form builder. The trick here is to apply the rules to as many fields as possible because in this way you will substantially limit the risk of an SQL injection.

Sanitization is the other thing you can make use of as it further lowers the chances of an attack. This process guarantees that the validated data is also safe to process. To sanitize your data you could simply limit the use of special characters in certain fields. Here’s a little inside information from our WordPress developers – did you know that the single quote (‘) is a common part of SQL code?

Well, it is and as such, it might be a good idea to prohibit its usage in your input fields. Another easy tip we can give you is to use drop-down menus for answers as opposed to open-ended fields. This will prevent hackers from writing malicious code in your text field and at the same time, it won’t affect the user experience on your site.

On the contrary, people actually prefer to choose options from a drop-down menu instead of having to write the information themselves. For example, you can make a drop-down menu for users to select their city of residence.

2. Scan Your WordPress Website for SQL Injection Vulnerabilities

Our WordPress development agency believes that one of the easiest ways to prevent SQL injection attacks is by performing regular scans on your site. There’s a myriad of online tools that you can use for that purpose.

The great thing is that these tools are super easy to use and all you need to do is enter your site’s URL. From there, a scan will be performed and you will be notified of any discovered vulnerabilities. Here are some top-rated options you can use:

WPScan – This is a great vulnerability scanner that is free for personal use;
WordPress Security Scan – This tool checks for basic vulnerabilities on your WordPress site;
Sucuri SiteCheck – This online tool checks your website for known malware, errors, blacklisting status, and if your site is out-of-date.

3. Update Your WordPress Website Regularly

Our WordPress Agency for Development will never get tired of reminding you just how important regular updates are. This is of utmost significance when it comes to keeping your database secure.

Error Establishing A Database Connection

You need to have the latest version of WordPress to make sure that there aren’t any security gaps that hackers can exploit. The same thing applies to the themes and plugins you might be using – keep them regularly updated as well.

4. Hide Your WordPress Version

Professional WordPress developers would always advise you to not publicly display the WordPress version you’re currently using. This kind of information helps hackers to exploit known vulnerabilities on a particular version.

There’s an easy way to hide your WordPress version. All you need to do is copy and paste the following line of code into the functions.php file of your active theme:

remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);

5. Use a Firewall on Your WordPress Website

When it comes to WordPress website development, using a firewall can be one of your greatest techniques to keep your site secure.

A firewall is a network security system that monitors and controls data coming into your site.

This means that it will increase the level of security against SQL injection attacks even further.

6. Limit Your WordPress Site’s Access Privileges

Our WordPress Agency for Development advises you to limit the access privileges on your site as this is another way of securing your databases against an SQL injection. WordPress offers various levels of access to your site called “roles” and each different role is granted access to different “capabilities” and dashboard areas.

Obviously, higher roles have higher privileges with entering data and so it is recommended to limit the number of people with this kind of access. Doing so will automatically lower your chances of an SQL injection attack. Users’ roles can be altered when you go to Settings → New User Default Role.

Protect Your WordPress Website From SQL Injection Attacks!

As you can see, WordPress website development comes with its own set of challenges and that includes hacking attempts such as the SQL injection attack. It sounds scary and it can really cause a lot of trouble but thankfully, there are certain precautions you can take to ensure that your website is properly protected.

Our WordPress development agency reminds you once again that defending your website’s data against malicious attacks should be your number 1 priority. By keeping your site safe and sound you not only guarantee its top performance but you also provide peace of mind to your visitors and users who need to be sure that they can entrust you with their personal information details.

Remember that if you have any questions about preventing SQL injection attacks on a WordPress website, you can always contact the professional WordPress developers from Vipe Studio. Our agency can build you a site that meets the highest possible standards when it comes to security, performance and optimization. So don’t be shy and get in touch, we’ll be more than happy to work together!