I my experience, the website hackers usually brute force attacks the FTP accounts. Unencrypted wireless networks are open to anyone around, even without any physical access.

Anyone with physical access to the cabeled network between your client computer and the server will be able to see it. Any reason to think that has happened, and have you made anything to prevent such attacks?īut why should an attacker bother to get into your computer to find the FTP passwords? FTP credentials goes unencrypted over the network. If the hackers got the paswords from FileZilla they first had to hack into your computer. Why are you so sure to blame FileZilla? (I don't use FileZilla.) Your sites will most likely be compromised. IMHO: do not use FileZilla if you enable it's 'save password' feature. I recommend WinSCP, which has an optional 'master' password that will encrypt your FTP credentials. And then use a different FTP client program. Then change all your FTP site credentials. Uninstall, then manually remove the settings file (not removed by the uninstall, look in your %APPDATA% folder). So, my warning to others: do not use FileZilla as your FTP client.

And this easily accessable exploit of the FileZilla FTP credentials doesn't seem to be any concern to the FileZilla developers. And the reason that was successful is because I was using FileZilla as my FTP client.įileZilla stores FTP credentials (site/user/password) in an easily accessable plain text file. I do keep my system quite current on patches, so can't verify the attack vector.īut I believe that, once the exploit got into my system, it used my FTP credentials to upload a changed header.php file to a WP site's active theme folder. I believe the attack vector was on a local computer that had a 'drive-by' insertion of some java exploit. I experienced a hack of the header.php file that resulted in an inserted iframe that contained Clicking fraud (the inserted code simulates a click on search results links, giving the hacker 'click income').

Filezilla ftp exploit