It’s every business owner’s worst nightmare – their website has been hacked. Suddenly, all of your online content is replaced with something offensive, or worse, your entire site is taken offline. What do you do now? In this blog post, we’ll outline some steps that you can take to mitigate the damage and protect your site. Keep reading for more information.
If your site has been hacked, the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and stay calm. panicking will not help the situation, and in fact, may make it worse. There are steps you can take to remedy the situation and protect your site from future attacks. Keep reading for more information.
Why do websites get hacked?
There are many ways servers could hack your website, and each of them could be for a different reason.
SEO Spam
Website hackers use various methods to make money, one of which is SEO spam. They’ll inject backlinks and other types of affiliate marketing campaigns on hacked sites in order to redirect visitors from legitimate webpages without their knowledge or permission – a form of cybercrime called “link building.” This ruins your site’s performance with search engines that rank you lower than before due to this practice taking place while also ruining any reputation that may have been established over time through hard work promoting business opportunities around keywords related specifically to what it sells.
Personal Computer Security
When your personal computer is hacked, the attack could include stealing saved information for websites and logins. This gives criminals access to online resources using your credentials. The most common reason resulting in a Hack. It’s all about who you’re trusting: either malicious software or script scanning through IP addresses looking for vulnerable points on offer (like vulnerability scanners).
Third-Party Access
Third-party access is one of the most common reasons resulting in a hack. Third-party apps and software vulnerabilities can put your personal information at risk, including logins for websites you visit, or emails stored on their servers.
Direct Server Attacks
Sometimes, criminals will try to access your website by targeting its host. This is known as a direct hack and it’s usually more difficult than indirect approaches because you have one service provider rather than many hosting companies who may share information with each other in violation of privacy laws.
The criminal element isn’t always limited though-if any site on which they are hosted becomes compromised then hackers could potentially breach security through this route too.
What Are The Signs That My Website Could Be Hacked?
Here are some of the things that could signal a hack has taken place on your website and you might need to go and check it.
- You cannot log in to your admin panel
- Hosting providers contacting you about unusual account activity
- Your security plugin is firing warnings
- Google Search Console warning – the site’s been hacked or serving malware
- Warning signs are displayed when searching your domain
- Your website redirecting to another domain
- Your website has become extremely slow
- Strange-looking JavaScript code in your website code
How To Check If Your Site’s Been Hacked?
How to scan a website for hacks:
There are various ways to check the site for hacks, one of the free tools you can use is SiteCheck.
- Visit the SiteCheck
- Click Scan Website.
- If your site is infected, review the warning message.
- Note any payloads and locations (if available).
- Note any blocklist warnings.
Check Core File Integrity
Hacked files can be identified by seeing if they were recently modified.
Check Diagnostic Pages
If you’re having trouble with your website being blocked by Google or another web security authority, use their diagnostic tools to check its status.
You can check your site’s security and reports for free through webmaster tools. You’ll need an account with these sites, but it is worth the investment as they are open to everyone.
How To Fix A Website That’s Been Hacked
Updating your site and configuration settings
The first thing you would need to do to fix a website that’s been hacked is to update and reset your configuration settings, ensuring you that all your out-of-date software is updated as that sometimes can be a cause of infections. Update Plugins, and CMS versions.
If your credentials or passwords have been compromised, it’s best to have those reset as well.
This will help prevent any future hacks on your website.
Restoring your backup
If your site is backed up, it should be less of a hassle as you would need to restore your site to a version before the hack happened. The only concern here is that you will lose any updates to the site that happened after that version. Ensure you always back up your site.
Check with your hosting company
If your site was hacked from the server side, there is very little you can do. Content your web host for assistance as they are often very useful when it comes to cleaning up hacks from the hosting environment.
For more informative articles, read the Algorithm Agency Thought Leadership articles that can help you with SEO, Paid Media, Content, Reporting and more.
If you need help or advice on any aspects of your SEO strategy or execution, contact a member of the Algorithm team.
Author : Ntokozo Dlamini
