13,000 WordPress sites are hacked every day—is yours next?
WordPress powers over 40% of the web, which makes it the largest target for attackers on the internet. Here’s what the 2026 threat data actually shows.
WordPress runs somewhere between 41% and 43.5% of every website on the internet, which is precisely why it absorbs a disproportionate share of automated attacks. Patchstack’s 2026 State of WordPress Security whitepaper puts the daily hack count at roughly 13,000 sites, and the exploitation window keeps shrinking—attackers now move from a public vulnerability disclosure to active, automated exploitation in a median of five hours.
The problem isn’t WordPress core—it’s what’s installed on top of it
Of the 11,334 new vulnerabilities disclosed in 2025, 91% were found in plugins and only a handful in WordPress core itself. Every plugin installed is effectively another attack surface, and 46% of vulnerabilities had no developer patch available at the moment they were publicly disclosed—meaning updates alone aren’t a complete defense.
What actually reduces risk
81% of hacked WordPress sites had weak or stolen passwords as a contributing factor, and the vast majority of credential-stuffing attacks target the default /wp-login.php and /wp-admin paths—low-effort fixes with outsized impact. Only 27% of site owners have an actual breach recovery plan, which means most businesses are improvising during the worst possible moment to improvise.
- Keep plugins to the minimum you actually need—every one is an attack surface.
- Move admin login off the default URL and enforce strong, unique passwords.
- Maintain automated daily backups stored somewhere separate from your hosting.
- Have a written incident response plan before you need one, not during an active breach.
“Just changing a user name to anything other than ‘admin’ will protect your website from the majority of attacks.”
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What this means for your business
A hacked site isn’t just a technical inconvenience—it means downtime, a potential Google blacklist warning, and organic rankings that can take months to recover. With only 27% of site owners having a recovery plan in place, the businesses that treat security as ongoing maintenance rather than a one-time setup step are the ones that stay online.
Key takeaways
- Roughly 13,000 WordPress sites are hacked every day worldwide.
- 91% of 2025’s disclosed vulnerabilities were in plugins, not WordPress core.
- Attackers exploit new vulnerabilities in a median of five hours after disclosure.
- Weak passwords and default login URLs remain the single biggest contributing factor.
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