What are the three things small and medium-sized enterprises should do first in the large-scale exploitation activities of content management systems
After the large-scale exploitation activities of CMS appear, what are the three things that small and medium-sized enterprises should do first? The suggestions given by the report are actually only two sentences: immediately patch the affected platforms and extensions, and recover the invaded sites from known good backups. For small teams with limited resources, it needs to be translated into three things that can be done immediately - put the patch rhythm into the weekly calendar, make the trusted backup into a recoverable asset, and integrate the residual cleaning and expression into one tool.
What scale of threat does the report point to
The security agency's announcement released in July 2026 described this round of large-scale exploitation activity as a targeted attack against website content management systems, naming common platforms including WordPress, Joomla, and Craft CMS. The attack paths focused on unauthorized file upload and remote code execution. The characteristics of this activity are not a single high-difficulty exploitation, but rather the automation of scanning and batch attempts for publicly known issues, therefore,
For small and medium-sized enterprises, the threat model is very simple: the attacker relies on automation, and the defender can reduce the success rate by making basic actions routine.
First: schedule the patch rhythm into a fixed weekly calendar.
It is not 'deal with it after seeing the announcement,' but check the version and update descriptions of the systems used at a fixed time each week, and leave a window for execution. The risk of security updates is that they are scanned after being made public, and the speed of processing is more valuable than discussion.
Three things are set when scheduling the weekly: who is responsible for the check, how often it should be executed, and what must be done before execution. The last one is usually the backup of the site, and only by doing two things together can you avoid the situation where 'problems caused by upgrading can only be endured hardily'.
AnQiCMS also releases its own security fixes in this rhythm, v3.6.6 fixes two high-risk issues such as parameter injection in list sorting and the login credentials of the site switching being forgeable in one go, and explicitly requires the rotation of the signature keys of all sites and the modification of all admin passwords in the upgrade prompts. This type of 'version that requires an additional step after the upgrade' is exactly the case where you can't just click the update button.
The second item: prepare a recoverable reliable backup
The key point in the statement 'recovery from a known good backup' in the notice is 'known good'. It is difficult to confirm whether the scripts, scheduled tasks, and accounts are thoroughly cleaned up at the site that was attacked; a whole-site rollback based on a reliable backup point is the only verifiable solution.
A backup meets three conditions to be usable: covers data and uploaded static files, has clear recovery procedures, and has been through at least one real recovery drill. Simply existing compressed packages do not equal recoverability; many sites only find missing files when they try to unpack them for the first time.
AnQiCMS has made backup and recovery a built-in feature of the backend, including data and static files in the backup range, daily operations do not require additional scripts, and a backup point should be created first before upgrading or patching.
| Action | Frequency recommendation | Completion mark |
|---|---|---|
| Check for security updates | Fixed once a week | Recorded, and whether it has been determined to rise or not this week |
| Execute site backup | Before each change plus once a week | Can recover a page that can be accessed in an isolated environment |
| Residual investigation | Plus once a month after each event | The account, task, and upload directory have been completed |
| Uniform expression | Content batch adjusted after | Keyword and link replacement results inspected |
The third item: clean up leftovers and unify the external expression
After the event is handled, the two types of dirty data that are most likely to be left are: residual files and abnormal accounts, and incorrect expressions and invalid links scattered in old articles. The second type is often ignored, but it directly affects the search engine and user trust in your site.
AnQiCMS's all-site replacement tool can batch replace keywords or links, synchronize the adjustment results to various entry points with navigation settings, single-page management, and email reminders; the sensitive word filtering and anti-crawling interference code at the content layer is responsible for blocking similar issues in advance during subsequent publishing. Cleaning and unification are completed in the same background, which is more controllable than having editors manually modify each article.
There are three things that can be put off first.
Purchase new gateways, change server vendors, and reinforce the site with CDN - these are not the top priority. Automated attacks feed on 'unpatched instances of known issues', making patches and backups solid is far more beneficial than adding another layer of components; the new components themselves are also new surfaces to maintain.
Common questions
Question: If the site is outsourced and you can't access the backend, what should you do?Answer: Confirm two things first - who has the authority to perform updates, and where the backups exist and whether they can be restored. If you can't answer any of these, write them into the operation and maintenance agreement.
Question: How long does a backup need to be fresh?Answer: The standard is the amount of content that can be tolerated to be lost. For sites that are mainly updated, it is more reliable to have one or two updates per day or every other day; an additional one before the change.
Question: If the site has been hacked, can it be cleaned up by itself first?Answer: It is not recommended. First, disconnect the entry that can be written again, then rollback from a trusted backup, and then review the logs; cleaning on the spot is difficult to prove that it has been cleaned up completely.