Security Vulnerabilities of Websites and Challenges in Combating these Threats

The public use of Internet started in 1990s. Since then, billions of websites have been developed. Also the technology has caused development of websites easier and less costly. It has enabled people to make their online presence quickly and easily through the use of websites. In recent years a number of Open Source CMS (Content Management Systems) have developed which enabled creation of websites in minutes. This large number of adoption of website by people also led to the growth of unskilled website administrators and developers. As a result almost 75% of websites are found to be infected with malware.

Google reported in March 2015 that around 17 million websites either have installed malicious software or trying to steal information. This number is increased to 50 million in March 2016. Google blocks nearly 20000 websites per week for malware and phishing. Most of these blocked websites are found to be implemented with WordPress, Joomla, and Magento.

This paper addresses various security vulnerabilities found in websites implemented with different technologies, methods of combating these vulnerabilities and research and development in this direction.