Ask a Security Pro

Code is what allows website owners to customize their websites and make it unique. However, sometimes malware can sneak into that code, resulting in a potentially harmful impact to unsuspecting users. Using today’s techniques, how would you distinguish which code is good and which code is bad? And what will that identification look like in the future? In this article, we will discuss current malware detection methods and the future of malware identification. Plus, provide insight into the role machine learning can play moving forward.

My name is Nick and I’m a Web Security Analyst with SiteLock. After completing my first year in the cybersecurity industry I wanted to share my perspective on how to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to break into this rapidly growing field.

Over the last year I’ve led a multitude of security workshops aimed to educate entry-level WordPress users about website security. Some of the questions I regularly field in these workshops are related to the mechanics of SSL certificates, and their role in protecting website data from prying eyes. As you may know, the installation of an SSL certificate on a web server allows the server to accept traffic on the hypertext transfer protocol (secure), or simply ‘HTTPS,’ the primary form of encrypted data transfer between websites and visitors. I’d like to share the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions I’ve had on the subject.

In Part One of our #AskSecPro series on WordPress Database Security, we learned about the anatomy of WordPress. Now that we have a firm understanding of the role the WordPress MySQL database plays in a WordPress installation, we can take a look at the various ways an adversary can exploit the mechanisms involved. We’ll also explore some of the ways to defend your database against compromise.

Over the last few days you may have heard the term #Cloudbleed thrown around the water cooler. Some of the questions our customers are asking us include, “What is Cloudbleed?” and “Am I protected from Cloudbleed?” As your resident Security Professional, I’ll be glad to help you to understand what the Cloudbleed buzz is all about and how it may impact you.

For most people the year is still just getting started, but for some website owners the year has already packed quite a punch in the form of website attacks. This month hackers exploiting a vulnerability in the WordPress REST API successfully defaced over a million websites in what has become one of the largest website defacement campaigns to date. The attacks injected content that overwrote existing posts on WordPress websites running versions 4.7 and 4.7.1, leaving website owners with an immeasurable number of “Hacked by” posts across the droves of impacted websites.

So far in this #AskSecPro DDoS series we’ve covered both Application Layer DDoS Attacks and Protocol-Based DDoS Attacks. We’ve also identified the differences between a DoS and a DDoS attack. In this final segment of the DDoS series, we’ll discuss the third category of DDoS attacks, Volumetric Attacks, also known as Volume-Based Attacks

Continuing our #AskSecPro DDoS series where we last discussed Application Layer Attacks, today we’ll focus on some of the most popular protocol-based DDoS attacks we’ve seen hit our customers’ web application firewall, SiteLock TrueShield™, over the years. TrueShield™ is SiteLock’s distributed cloud-based web application firewall (WAF) with the capability of defending against attacks across layers 3, 4, and 7.

In our last #AskSecPro article we discussed the differences between a DoS and a DDoS attack. Now that we understand what a DDoS attack is in concept, let’s learn a little more about the mechanisms involved in these attacks. In Part Two of the DDoS Attacks series we’ll focus on some of the attack vectors utilized by adversaries when launching a denial of service attack.

There’s a lot of buzz going around in many online communities concerning the recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks the world has witnessed. In many of my own circles I’m often the only security guy in the room so I end up fielding a lot of questions, the most common of which is, “how do they do this stuff?!” In this series, I’ll be explaining the anatomy of D/DoS attacks and the practical weaponization of regular computers.