Fortifying Your WordPress Site Against SQL Injection Attacks

SQL injection attacks pose a real threat to your website’s security in several ways, and it’s imperative that you understand how they work.

This article will cut through the technical jargon and give you the knowledge and tools you need to protect your site, regardless of your level of tech know-how.

Read on to find out what SQL injections are, the real-world consequences of falling victim to an attack, and the practical steps you can take to fortify your WordPress site against them.

What are SQL injection attacks?

WordPress uses a MySQL database to store and manage all of your website’s data, including posts, pages, user information, and more. This deep integration between WordPress and SQL is what makes your site dynamic.

An SQL injection attack is an attack that targets the data stored in the MySQL database, in some way.

Here’s how SQL injection attacks work:

1. Attackers craft malicious SQL queries and insert them into input fields on your WordPress site, such as login forms, contact forms, search bars, etc.
2. If your site doesn’t enforce strict rules regarding what counts as valid input when it receives requests, these malicious queries can be executed directly against your database.
3. This allows attackers to bypass other security measures and interact with your database directly,  such as viewing, modifying, or deleting data without explicit authorisation.

The consequences of a successful SQL injection attack can be severe:

• Attackers can expose and steal data, including personal and sensitive content.
• They can potentially update data within the database that lets them inject spam and malicious links that extend harm to your users.
• Some attacks can allow for administrative access to your website, enabling them to compromise your site’s security even further. This may allow them to steal additional data, or use your site as a platform to distribute malware or launch attacks on other platforms.

These are just the direct consequences. In the fallout, you have to contend with:

• Reputational damage.
• Getting blacklisted by search engines.
• Regulatory penalties.
• Legal action.

What makes a WordPress site vulnerable to an SQL injection?

Decisions you make as an admin could make your WordPress site more susceptible to SQL injection attacks. These include:

• Using outdated WordPress core, plugins, and themes: These might have well-documented and easily accessible security flaws that malicious actors can exploit.
• Using nulled, unsupported, or pirated plugins/themes: Malicious actors often modify nulled versions to include hidden malware that compromises your site.
• Writing insecure custom plugin and theme code: Poorly written code that doesn’t follow secure best practices might fail to sanitise user inputs or use secure database queries. Both can introduce fatal security vulnerabilities.
• Neglecting proper input validation: Input validation ensures that data entered into your website meets the expected format, length, and type requirements before processing.
• Granting excessive database functionality and privileges: Excessive privileges can enable attackers to perform harmful actions, such as modifying or deleting data, creating new administrative accounts, or even taking control of your entire website or any other website/data to which the user privileges has access.

Real-world example: 7-Eleven and the repercussions of SQL injection attacks

In 2010, a hacker was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $25,000 for their role in breaching the systems of various major companies, one of which was retail giant 7-Eleven.

Acting as part of a team of three, the attacker used a SQL injection attack to break through 7-Eleven’s security and steal an unknown amount of card information. For context, during a similar attack, the same hackers stole data from 130 million debit and credit cards, reportedly causing $130 million in losses.

Despite the prosecution and conviction, the devastating effects of the breach lingered.

Financially, 7-Eleven faced immense costs in notifying affected customers and implementing stronger security measures. The reputational damage was severe, as customer trust plummeted, leading to long-term losses in loyalty and revenue. According to a survey, 78% of customers are concerned about doing business with a retailer if they’ve experienced a breach.

More than anything, this incident underscores the critical importance of proactive cybersecurity practices. Fortunately, there are concrete steps that anyone can take to protect their WordPress site from similar attacks, as we’ll see below.

Measures to prevent SQL injections

It’s far more effective to fortify your site proactively, rather than react to attacks. The effects of a SQL injection attack – data theft, reputational damage, and financial loss – are long-lasting, and it’s better to focus on prevention over cure.

This section will guide you through actionable measures you can implement to enhance your site’s defences and mitigate these risks.

Input validation

Proper input validation is the first line of defence against SQL injection attacks. By rigorously vetting all user input, you can prevent malicious data from infiltrating and compromising your databases. Follow these guidelines to ensure robust input validation:

• Implement both server-side and client-side validation: Client-side validation enhances the user experience by providing instant feedback on input errors, but it’s easy for attackers to bypass. Always supplement it with server-side validation.
• Use allow lists (whitelisting) instead of block lists (blacklisting): Allow lists permit only safe, known input and reject everything else.
• Validate input for correct syntax and semantics: Ensure structured data syntax like dates, emails, and phone numbers follow expected formats (e.g., “YYYY-MM-DD” for dates). Ensure semantics by verifying that input makes sense within the business context, such as a start date preceding an end date.
• Sanitise user input by removing potentially malicious characters: Remove special characters that could be used for attacks, such as quotes, semicolons, and SQL-specific keywords. This ensures that user input cannot alter the structure of SQL queries.
• Validate everything coming into your website, not just forms: Check data from all sources, including APIs, files, databases, and other external inputs. Treat all external data as potentially malicious and subject it to the same rigorous validation processes as user-submitted forms.

Bad-bot blocking

Most cyber attacks are powered by bots, which allow attackers to target multiple websites simultaneously and search for vulnerabilities at a huge scale. As such, implementing bad-bot blocking is one of the simplest ways to reduce the risk of falling victim to SQL injections.

There isn’t one definitive trait that can identify a good bot, like a search engine crawler, from a bad one, so you need a tool that can identify the cumulative telltale signs.

Shield Security PRO does just this using its silentCAPTCHA technology – it identifies malicious bots based on behavioural patterns and, once a malicious pattern is detected, the bot’s IP address is blocked so it can’t keep probing for potential vulnerabilities.

Running regular updates

Regular updates are essential for maintaining the security of your WordPress site, but they can also introduce some issues. Applying updates without due care, however, can introduce risk that impacts site performance, or cause crashes due to early-release bugs.

Vanilla WordPress allows you to set automatic updates for the core, themes, and plugins, but this can be risky.

Shield Security PRO mitigates these risks by offering more control by allowing you to delay new core updates by a few days. This delay helps avoid early-release bugs and ensures your site remains stable and also secure.

Using a Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A WAF helps you detect and block SQL injection attacks by filtering incoming traffic and identifying malicious patterns.

Shield Security PRO’s WAF feature adds an extra layer of protection against these attacks. It continuously monitors traffic to your site, identifying and blocking suspicious activities before they can exploit vulnerabilities.

The WAF is also highly customizable, allowing you to tailor its settings to meet your specific security needs. In fact, one of the blocking options prohibits SQL queries in all application parameters.

This proactive defence mechanism significantly enhances your site’s security, ensuring that potential threats are neutralised before they can cause harm.

Limiting user permissions

The principle of least privilege ensures users and processes have only the necessary permissions to fulfill their role, minimising the potential damage they can cause, either accidentally or on-purpose.

Adopt these expert approaches for effective user permission management:

• Regularly review and remove unnecessary access by conducting a privilege audit.
• Define roles based on job functions and grant access only as needed by implementing Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
• Provide elevated access only when necessary and for a limited time by granting temporary elevated privileges.
• Train users on effective access management and involve them in security practices to ensure they understand the role they play.

Running regular security audits

Regular security audits and penetration testing are essential for identifying and addressing vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

Shield Security PRO facilitates these audits by providing detailed reports on your website’s security status, highlighting potential weaknesses and enabling you to take corrective actions promptly.

Other features of Shield Security PRO that help you run thorough security audits include automated scans, real-time alerts, and comprehensive audit logs. These tools help you maintain a secure site by continuously monitoring threats and vulnerabilities.

For more information, check out our in-depth guide to conducting security audits and interpreting audit reports.

Enjoy overall WordPress security with Shield Security PRO

SQL injections are a serious threat that can gravely impact WordPress sites, but implementing solid cybersecurity measures will greatly reduce much of the risk.

Your best defense against these attacks involves ensuring all user inputs are rigorously vetted through input validation, keeping your WordPress core, themes, and plugins up-to-date with regular updates, and blocking bad bots that probe your site for weaknesses.

Shield Security PRO is particularly effective in blocking bad bots, which are often used to execute automated SQL injection attacks. Its robust features ensure that these threats are neutralised before they can cause harm.

By adopting these proactive strategies, you can strengthen your WordPress site against SQL injections and other cyber threats. Get started with Shield Security PRO today and ensure your website remains safe and secure!