Piracy only concerns new unpopular WordPress sites, right?
False. Hackers target newly created, older, well established websites, and to be perfectly honest with you, the rate of hacking WordPress sites is alarming.
But before looking at what you should do if your site is hacked, first identify the signs of a hacked site.
Most hacking incidents result froma breach of data security, hackers being able to access the sensitive information of the Website or company, such as passwords and usernames. Cybercriminals can enter in person or through software.
Indicators that your website has been hacked
- A sudden drop in traffic
- Bad links appearing on the site, especially on the footer
- The home page of the site is disfigured
- You cannot log in to your website
- Suspicious or spammy user accounts appear, which can hijack even the administrator role
- Le Website unresponsive or slower than normal
- Scripts and unknown files on your server and especially in the dossier /wp -content/
- Inability to send or receive emails from the WordPress site
- Suspicious scheduled task
- Popup ads on the site
If you are experiencing any of the above signs, it is highly likely that your website has been hacked. It's easy to feel helpless, frustrated, and inundated at this point, but you need to stay calm and fix the problem.
Keeping an eye on all of this is not always easy. This is where solutions such as WP Security Audit Log to help understand what's going on. Such a tool plays an essential role in securing your WordPress site.
Here's what you should do to repair the mess.
1. Contact your host
As a general rule, good advertising companiesaccommodation are useful in such situations. Those who have technological know-how and experienced employees have already faced such problems and can therefore help you quickly.
If your site is on a shared server, then it is possible to find out if the hacker used another website on the server to access yours. In this case, the host can show you how the hack started and spread. They can also inform you of the location of the backdoor to your site.
To make sure that your site stays safe and that if it gets hacked you will have a supportive hosting team by your side, we recommend that you go with trusted companies such as SiteGround, WP Engine ou Kinsta.
If you do not know where to start (they all offer different options at varying costs), our guide on hosting WordPress should help you. There are other great hosts as well, but these are the ones we have used more often and have always supported us.
2. Hire a professional
If your site has been hacked and you want an expert to clean it up quickly, you should consider contacting a professional for help. An infiltrated site usually deteriorates over time. That is why you should bring in an expert to fix the problem and secure the site.
We've worked with a few trusted companies in the past, including Sucuri et Malcareboth of which offer excellent service and are highly skilled in these areas.
3. Restore the previous version of the site
If you have been diligent in creating backups for your WordPress website (it is for this reason that we highly recommend using the services BlogVault ), you have a golden moment right in front of you. You must restore the site to its version prior to the hack.
When restoring the old backup of your website, always keep in mind that the entire site will revert to the previous version. This means that gallery images and other site changes may be lost. However, an old but clean website is worth more than a hacked site.
After successfully restoring the old version of your site, remember that it is not yet safe from hackers. So you need to act quickly to add a layer of security and prevent malicious activity and common threats to cybersecurity, in the future.
4. Check the permissions of your site.
If you can log into your website dashboard, you should be able to verify the permissions of your WordPress users. Confirm that only you and your team can access administrator accounts, and that no one has tampered with other users' permissions.
If you encounter new suspicious users, delete them immediately.
5. Edit all passwords for your website
Be sure to change the passwords you use to access cPanel, WordPress Dashboard, FTP Client, Database data MySQL and any other means allowing a third party to access the website.
Now you need to find new secure passwords that can give even the best hackers a headache. To do this, consider using a password generator or a full sentence with spaces, letters, symbols, and numbers as the password.
Final word
After implementing the steps above, your site is secure. But you shouldn't relax after that as WordPress security should be an ongoing effort.
Remember to install the plugin WP Security Audit Log, which keeps a log of all changes made to your website. This can come in handy during the post-piracy forensic investigation, as I explained above.
