WordPress is everywhere. It powers blogs, shops, restaurants, portfolios, even the websites of local governments. If you’ve ever thought about building a site, someone has probably told you, “Just use WordPress.” It’s free, it’s flexible, and it has thousands of add-ons called “plugins” that let you do almost anything.
Sounds perfect, right? Well, it would be, if it weren’t also one of the most consistently hacked platforms on the internet.
Just this summer, more than 70,000 sites running WordPress were left wide open because of a faulty contact form plugin. Another 70,000+ sites using a theme called Inspiro could be tricked into installing malicious software. And before those two disasters? A plugin used on nearly half a million sites was letting hackers reset admin passwords and take over accounts like it was nothing. Even one of the premium, pay-to-use plugins, Gravity Forms, was briefly serving poisoned downloads. People literally paid for malware.
This isn’t new. WordPress has been keeping hackers busy for over a decade. Back in 2011, a tiny image tool bundled into themes opened the floodgates to mass infections. In 2014, a flashy slideshow plugin was so insecure it fueled a global malware campaign. By 2017, WordPress’s own system had a hole that let vandals deface sites en masse, while another plugin pushed out an official update that secretly contained a backdoor. Think about that: website owners installed a “security update” that was actually malware.
And the hits just kept coming. A plugin meant to help with GDPR compliance was hijacked in 2018, giving attackers control of more than 100,000 websites. In 2019, a social media plugin started redirecting visitors to scam sites. In 2020, a file manager plugin was so badly built that hackers were running their own code on over 700,000 sites within days. In 2022, another plugin with over a million users was so broken that WordPress had to force an update onto every site just to stop the bleeding. And yes, even the big names like Elementor, a premium design tool, have shipped flaws that exposed online stores.
The scale of the problem is staggering. In 2024 alone, researchers logged nearly 8,000 new security holes in WordPress plugins and themes. That’s about a third more than the year before. Almost all of them came from third-party add-ons, not WordPress itself. The core software is usually fine; it’s the thousands of extras people bolt on that turn websites into Swiss cheese.
Here’s the harsh truth: hackers love WordPress because it’s easy money. They don’t have to invent genius new tricks. They just wait for the next plugin problem, then unleash automated bots to crawl the internet and break into every site that hasn’t updated yet. And let’s be real, most site owners don’t update their plugins right away. Some never update at all. So the window of opportunity for attackers is wide open.
So, is WordPress safe? Technically, yes, if you treat it like a high-maintenance pet. You need to update constantly, keep plugins to a bare minimum, pay for security add-ons, run backups, and cross your fingers. But for most small businesses that just want a website that “works,” WordPress is not so much a pet as it is a ticking time bomb.
The irony is painful: WordPress is free to install, but the real cost is the constant babysitting it demands. If you don’t have the time or expertise to manage it properly, the “cheap and easy” website builder can quickly turn into the most expensive headache you’ll ever have.
At the end of the day, WordPress is like leaving your house unlocked because “everyone else does it too.” Sure, it works fine until someone wanders in and steals your stuff. And the thieves? They know exactly which neighborhoods to target.
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