Keeping your WordPress site secure is crucial for maintaining your site‘s integrity and protecting your users. Unfortunately, WordPress sites are common targets for hackers looking to inject malware, steal data, or deface sites. Running regular scans with a WordPress vulnerability scanner can help detect potential security issues before they become full-blown problems.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll cover 14 of the top WordPress security scanners to help keep your site safe from threats.
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Why WordPress Sites Need Security Scanning
With WordPress powering over 40% of all websites, hackers frequently target WordPress sites to maximize their malicious impact. Some common WordPress vulnerabilities include:
- Outdated plugins and themes with known exploits
- Weak user passwords that are easy to crack
- Plugins with vulnerabilities that allow PHP code execution
- Poorly coded themes vulnerable to CSS/JS injection
- Lack of proper file permissions allowing access to sensitive files
Many vulnerabilities are subtle and easy to miss during normal use. Security scanners automate the process of checking for weak points across your entire WordPress installation. Running regular scans can detect issues early before hackers have a chance to exploit them.
What Can WordPress Vulnerability Scanners Do?
WordPress security scanners analyze your site for common vulnerabilities, malware, blacklisting status, and other indicators of compromise. Capabilities include:
- Checking WordPress core, plugins, and themes for known vulnerabilities
- Scanning code for malicious injections including backdoors, trojans, and suspicious redirects
- Verifying site is not blacklisted on Google Safe Browsing or other malware databases
- Testing for weak user passwords and usernames
- Identifying unnecessary information disclosure through error messages or source code
- Assessing overall security hygiene and looking for unpatched bugs
However, most WordPress scanners can only access what‘s visible from the public internet. They lack visibility into your database, user accounts, hosting environment, and other backend aspects. For optimal security, use a scanner in tandem with a web application firewall, secured hosting, and good access controls.
14 of the Best WordPress Vulnerability Scanners
Here are 14 excellent WordPress vulnerability scanners to incorporate into your security regimen:
1. Sucuri SiteCheck
Sucuri SiteCheck is a free, automated scanner that checks for malware, blacklisting, website errors, and other compromise indicators. It performs a deep site crawl to uncover hard-to-find infections throughout your pages. Sucuri also offers a complete web application firewall and malware removal services.
2. Wordfence Falcon
Wordfence Falcon is a freemium vulnerability scanner designed specifically for WordPress. The free version checks core, plugins, and themes against the Wordfence vulnerability database. Premium adds malware scanning, country blocking, uptime monitoring, and access to the Threat Defense Feed.
3. Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner
Acunetix is an automated web application security scanner that checks for SQL injection, XSS, and over 3000 other vulnerabilities. It provides flexible scheduling and integration options for regular WordPress scans. Acunetix offers a free trial and paid plans.
4. Netsparker WordPress Security Scanner
Netsparker is a powerful commercial web app scanner with a specific WordPress security test for analyzing plugins, themes, URLs, and users. It detects both known and zero-day vulnerabilities using custom fuzzing and injection tools. There is a free trial available.
5. RIPS Code Security Analysis
RIPS analyzes WordPress source code to identify dangerous functions, SQLi, XSS, RCE, and other vulnerabilities. It matches code patterns against a curated database of 120k+ known vulnerable functions. RIPS offers a free demo and paid plans.
6. Securi Security Auditing
Securi scans check WordPress sites for malware, vulnerable software, suspicious code, hidden redirects, and other threats. The free plan analyzes up to 15 pages. Paid plans unlock unlimited scanning and start at $15/month.
7. WebARX Security Analysis
WebARX performs static code analysis to identify high-risk vulnerabilities in WordPress sites. It offers scheduled scans with email alerts and PDF reports. They have proprietary vulnerability checks tailored for WordPress core, plugins, themes, and configurations.
8. AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX)
OTX aggregates threat data from over 100,000 participants to identify compromised WordPress sites. It checks site reputation against various blacklists and offers malware analysis capabilities. OTX has a free community version along with paid plans.
9. ImmuniWeb Automated Web Security Testing
ImmuniWeb provides a free website security test that analyzes WordPress sites for known vulnerabilities. The ImmuniWeb Community Edition can check web apps over HTTPS, test login pages, audit headers, and monitor domain reputation.
10. Google Safe Browsing
The Google Safe Browsing diagnostic checks if your site has been identified as hosting malware or phishing content. This free tool alerts you to dangerous issues that could impact search ranking and browser warnings for site visitors.
11. Quttera Website Malware Scanner
Quttera scans websites for malware, redirects, iframes, JavaScript, and other threats. It checks across blacklists and analyzes site code. The free version allows you to scan one URL at a time. Paid plans unlock additional features.
12. SiteGuarding WordPress Malware Scanner
SiteGuarding offers a fast, free malware and blacklist scanner optimized for WordPress. It checks core, plugins, themes, URLs, framesets, iframes, and JavaScript for threats. There is also a paid vulnerability scanner with scheduled scans.
13. VirusTotal URL/File Scanning
VirusTotal aggregates results from over 70 antivirus scanners to provide reputation and malware analysis for files and URLs. The free version allows you to upload WordPress files and scan site URLs for malware signals detected across their diverse antivirus engines.
14. Build With AI WordPress Scan
Build With AI offers a free online scan that checks WordPress sites for vulnerable plugins and themes, malware, blacklisting status, and the WP secure keys. Results get sent to your email with an overview of security recommendations.
How to Scan Your WordPress Site
Scanning your site with multiple tools provides overlapping visibility into different aspects of WordPress security. Here are some best practices for vulnerability scanning:
- Scan regularly – Schedule weekly or monthly scans to detect new threats early
- Use a mix of scanners – Each scanner analyzes site security differently, so using multiple tools enhances coverage
- Check blacklists – Monitoring blacklisting status is crucial to avoid browser warnings for visitors
- Scan after making changes – New plugins, themes, and core updates can introduce vulnerabilities
- Fix issues promptly – Don‘t allow detected problems to linger since they present active risk
- Monitor continuously – Scanning periodically is useful but misses issues between scans, so consider continuous monitoring as well
A proactive vulnerability management strategy combining multiple commercial and free WordPress scanners offers robust protection against the ever-evolving threat landscape. Prioritize addressing critical issues quickly and remediate lesser risks in order of severity.
Enhance WordPress Security Beyond Scanning
While vulnerability scanning is essential, it‘s important to implement additional safeguards:
- Harden WordPress configurations using a security plugin like Wordfence or iThemes Security
- Install a web application firewall to block exploits of any residual vulnerabilities
- Closely monitor user accounts, admin sessions, and privilege management
- Maintain strong, unique passwords across all user accounts
- Keep plugins, themes, and WordPress core up to date
- Limit information exposure and disable unused features
- Backup site frequently in case a vulnerability gets exploited
- Use a security-focused WordPress hosting provider
A resilient security posture requires defense in depth protections across tools, processes, and configurations. Automated vulnerability scanning is one key piece that helps harden the security of your WordPress site.
