The days of small businesses relying on “security through obscurity” to protect them are gone forever. Hackers have great financial incentive to unleash sophisticated — and often highly automated — attacks on even the smallest sites.
20% of all small businesses will be hacked within one year
(source: National Cyber Security Alliance)
31% of targeted attacks focus on businesses with fewer than 250 employees
(source: Symantec)
7READ BELOW FOR COMMON REASONS HACKERS ATTACK WEBSITES
1/. Stealing User Information
Any information can be sold – usernames, emails, password, etc. Any information stolen from a website can also be used attack other website (users could of used same login/password for amazon,paypal,etc) and your company can be sued for damages. Hackers can also change the compromised sites login page or payment page with an identical one hosted by the hackers. So users directly give their financial and login details to the Hackers.
2/. Hosting illegal/Objectionable Content
It can be difficult and expensive for people to secure hosting for illegal or objectionable content, so many of those who do such things will attempt to use other peoples’ websites to host the content directly, instead
3/. Search Engine Optimisation (+affiliate commissions)
Hackers attack so that the attacked website can be used to boost the SEO of other sites and also make the hacker money by adding links with affiliate commissions. Hackers place links on the hacked site to malicious sites that seek to harm your users’ computers and/or sell some fraudulent product or service. They are piggybacking on the legitimate hacked website’s reputation to promote their own “thing”.
4/. Spam Mail Server
Sending out 20,000 SPAM emails from a server will quickly get that site’s address blacklisted. So Hackers compromise other people sites to use to send SPAM emails from.
5/. Spreading Malware (eg Trojans, Viruses, and other bad stuff) is one of the main reasons why Hackers Attack
Hackers who want to use malware to infect other people’s computers need a site or sites on which to store the dangerous files. They obviously don’t want to use their own servers, which could easily be traced back to them. So, they will hack a site and upload their malware to it. Then, when the hackers send out their spam, the unsuspecting people may actually be downloading the malicious files from your website.
6/. Hackers Attack To Use The Site For Other Attacks
Hackers that want to do broader attacks will create a botnet (a large network of compromised computers) that they can use to attack other sites. A botnet makes it harder for the authorities to detect who is doing the hacking and also makes it harder to stop. In recent months, such botnets have been used in attacks against financial institutions as well as government websites and systems.
7/. Hackers Attack To Access Your Server
Amazing hey! Without the legitimate sites owners knowing their compromised server is being rented out to others by the hackers. They sell your server on the market to other malicious users who want to perform actions they would rather not perform on their own servers (sending spam, attacking the VISA website ,etc)
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