{"id":101,"date":"2017-12-17T09:36:20","date_gmt":"2017-12-17T09:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/?p=101"},"modified":"2025-07-15T15:36:34","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:36:34","slug":"beware-wp-service-controller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/17\/beware-wp-service-controller\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware the ‘wp.service.controller’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pesky wp.service.controller.WCjQy<\/strong> has tried overnight to log in to my blog \u2013 again. Think security, bloggers: hacks can happen to anyone.<\/p>\n

Cleaning up after hackers have infested your site with whatever is time-consuming and a pain. Though I have learned a lot in the process!<\/p>\n

If your host\/WP plan allows you to install them, there are a lot of plug-ins that can help:\u00a0https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/<\/a><\/p>\n

And use one like Sucuri that sets up email alerts so you know when someone’s tried it: especially, if like me, you neglect a blog for a while, or don’t update it all that often. They have some sound advice here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh, and if you have access to SiteLock… let’s just say my experience of their weekly scans wasn’t a positive one, eh?<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/h2>\n

The pesky WCjQy (not sure what to call him\/her for short!) does keep trying. A new kid in town calls himself superuser19505. That smacks of an inflated ego. They both use multiple IP addresses, unsurprisingly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, HostGator wanted to bill me about US $30 to renew SiteLock. (Falls about laughing in disbelief).<\/p>\n

And the latest trick…<\/h2>\n

…is to try to log in as one of the two genuine people with admin rights for this website. He\/she\/they use password-guessing brute-force attacks and either it’s a lot of them, or it’s someone bouncing things round the globe to hide their location (Amsterdam, Berlin, Columbia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Virginia USA…).<\/p>\n

Best advice to anyone is to a) to have a very long password, and b) to add security measures to make it harder (ideally impossible) for anyone to crack it.<\/p>\n

Given how persistent the attempts on this site are, I won’t go into details that might help them!<\/p>\n

Why do they bother?<\/h2>\n

Some cheering news: it’s getting less worthwhile for hackers to infest innocent websites anyway.<\/p>\n

In 2017: “Google cut the number of hacked websites from showing in the search results by 80 percent.”<\/p>\n

Google’s full report is here<\/a> . It’s cheering reading: go Google!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pesky wp.service.controller.WCjQy has tried overnight to log in to my blog \u2013 again. Think security, bloggers: hacks can happen to anyone. Cleaning up after hackers have infested your site with whatever is time-consuming and a pain. Though I have learned a lot in the process! If your host\/WP plan allows you to install them, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,21,20],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-computers","tag-hackers","tag-wordpress"],"yoast_head":"\nBeware the 'wp.service.controller' - Cumbrian Characters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you see wp.service.controller in the Users on your website, you have been hacked!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/17\/beware-wp-service-controller\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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