Most Discord servers get compromised because of the same five mistakes. Not zero-days, not sophisticated attacks — just basic hygiene that nobody told admins about.
I've been running Discord communities for years and built an open-source bot called Cipher that handles most of these automatically. Here's what I learned.
1. Trusting every attachment
Discord doesn't scan files. If someone uploads invoice.pdf.exe in your #general channel, it stays there until a mod notices — by which point 200 people may have downloaded it.
Fix: Use a bot that quarantines suspicious attachments automatically. Cipher scans every file with a dangerous extension (.exe, .bat, .scr, .jar, archives) before it reaches your members. Local heuristics plus optional VirusTotal and MalwareBazaar lookups.
2. No verification gateway
Anyone can join, anyone can post. Bots, alts, and ban evaders walk straight in.
Fix: Reaction or button verification. New members have to click a button or react to a message before they can see the rest of the server. Slows down raids, filters drive-by spam.
3. Giving mods admin permissions
Every mod with Administrator is a liability. One rogue mod, one compromised account, and your server is gone.
Fix: Use a proper staff system with scoped permissions. Cipher has a staff roster with leave-of-absence, daily activity tracking, and infractions — so you can promote people without handing them the keys to the kingdom.
4. No idea what's happening in your server
You don't know your retention rate. You don't know which channels are dead. You don't know if your mods are actually doing anything. You're flying blind.
Fix: A community health score. Cipher calculates a 0-100 score from real activity data: growth, engagement, retention, mod activity. You get actionable tips, not vanity metrics.
5. Five bots doing one job each
MEE6 for moderation. Dyno for automod. Ticket Tool for tickets. Carl-bot for reaction roles. Groovy for music. Five bots, five permission sets, five points of failure.
Fix: Consolidate. Cipher handles moderation, tickets, verification, file security, and analytics in one bot. Open source, free, self-hostable.
What to do now
- Audit your server for these five issues today
- Remove
Administratorfrom any mod who doesn't need it - Set up file scanning and verification
- Start tracking your community health
If you want a bot that handles all of this without five separate subscriptions: Cipher is free and open source. Add it to your server in one click.
This article is part of a series on running Discord communities that actually work. Follow for more.
