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Shocking 7,966 new vulnerabilities were discovered in the WordPress ecosystem in 2024 - that's a 34% increase compared to the previous year. If you run an online business, these numbers should concern you. It's not just about statistics - it's about the real threat of losing customer data, reputation, and money that hangs over every WordPress-based site.
While WordPress site owners battle an avalanche of security vulnerabilities, hand-coded sites remain a very difficult challenge for cybercriminals. Why? Because there are no plugins to attack, no popular themes to hack, no known backdoors exploited by automated bots.
Anatomy of Disaster - What These Numbers Really Mean
Plugin Hell - 96% of All Attacks
7,633 security vulnerabilities were found in WordPress plugins in 2024, accounting for 96% of all discovered vulnerabilities. This is no accident - it's a systemic problem in WordPress architecture that relies on thousands of add-ons created by independent developers.
Every plugin is a potential backdoor for hackers. Just one poorly written code in one of 15-30 plugins on an average WordPress site can completely compromise your business's security.
Abandoned Plugins - The Invisible Time Bomb
Most alarming is the fact that 25.7% of security vulnerabilities were not patched before public disclosure. Why? Because their creators simply abandoned their plugins. In 2024, 827 "zombie plugins" were identified - add-ons that are still active on thousands of sites but no longer receive any security updates.
These abandoned plugins are digital time bombs. They work normally for years, until one day a hacker discovers a vulnerability that was never patched.
Why WordPress is the Perfect Victim for Cybercriminals
Popularity = Easy Target for Hackers
WordPress powers 43% of all websites worldwide. For a hacker, this is like a city full of identical houses with the same locks. Break one lock, you have access to millions of homes.
Automated bots scan the internet looking for WordPress sites with specific plugin versions. When they find a known vulnerability, they can hack thousands of sites within hours.
Cross-Site Scripting - 47.7% of All Attacks
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is the most common type of attack on WordPress, accounting for almost half of all discovered vulnerabilities. In practice, this means a hacker can inject malicious JavaScript code into your site, which:
- Steals user login credentials
- Redirects customers to fake pages
- Installs malware in visitors' browsers
- Collects credit card data from forms
All this happens invisibly to the site owner and its users.
Broken Access Control - Hackers in the Admin Panel
14.19% of attacks exploit broken access control, meaning hackers can gain full administrator privileges without knowing the password. In practice, they can:
- Delete all site content
- Change the administrator email to their own
- Install backdoors for future attacks
- Steal the database with customer data
Hand-written Code - Smaller Attack Surface
Limited Entry Points = Reduced Risk
A hand-coded site, especially one based on static files, has a significantly smaller attack surface than WordPress. No popular plugins means eliminating 96% of typical threats.
Static Files vs Dynamic Threats
Sites built entirely with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript offer limited attack surface:
- No database eliminates SQL injection
- No PHP reduces server infiltration possibilities
- No login systems remove this attack vector
But they require:
- Following good coding practices
- Proper server configuration
- Regular security audits of external dependencies
Real Advantage
Static sites significantly reduce security risk, though they don't eliminate it completely. Thanks to simplified architecture, they require fewer security layers and generate fewer vulnerability points than complex CMS systems.
WordPress in 2025 - The Situation is Getting Worse
Hackers are already using artificial intelligence to automatically find vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins. AI can analyze the code of a thousand plugins in the time it would take a human months.
Machine learning algorithms are trained on databases of known WordPress vulnerabilities, meaning each new vulnerability can be exploited massively and immediately.
The more vulnerabilities found in WordPress, the more zero-day exploits - attacks that exploit previously unknown security vulnerabilities.
