The security is very important to the websites. Your site may have a user’s private data which is so crucial for your business integrity.
Although the WordPress platform is secure however viruses and hacking attempts are quite usual on this platform. The knowledge evolves so does the malware types and ways to affect sites.
Usually, a wrong configuration or technical negligence opens the back doors for hackers and malicious scripts to harm websites.
What is Malware?
Malware is normally a piece of software ( a unit of multiple scripts) that is written with the intent of damaging websites, devices, stealing data, and generally causing a mess. Viruses, Trojans, spyware, and ransomware are among the different kinds of malware.
What are the usual causes of Malware attack in WordPress?
- A weak password is one of the major reasons to get affected. It gives a chance to malicious scripts and spamming-bots to hack the website.
- Un-registered and nulled software can cause malware code penetration.
- Unsafe WordPress configuration and unsecured file permission can open the back door for bad automated scripts to run.
- Shared hosting servers can also affect the site where one website may harm all shared websites.
- Out-dated WordPress versions and plugins can also open the doors for hackers and suspicious code to affect the site.
- Non-standard and low-quality code is one of the reasons for the WordPress hacking and malware spread.
- Poor file and directory permissions (Read+Write+Execute) can also cause this.
- A server security breach can also spread the malware across the sites hosted on that server.
Don’t worry even the intelligent system with the tight security level could be hacked
Bilal
What are the symptoms of malware affected sites?
- Is your website has an automated redirect chain when you open any web page? It may be random though but the affected site normally goes to other URLs rather than the originally requested web page.
- Is your website redirected to adult sites or spammy sites before opening?
- Does your website turn slow most of the time with the usual traffic?
- Is the web browser blocking your website due to malware and giving a warning of virus/malware?
- Website is blocked by the search engine (Google or Bing)
What is the best way to avoid being hacked and improve security
- Keep your website Up-to-date. This means when any plugin, core update, or server stack update releases, get your site upgraded sooner as possible.
- Use a strong password for administrator accounts.
- Apply Google Recaptcha or other Spam blocker mechanism on Forms to save your self from being hacked.
- Use a reverse proxy to hide your actual Server IP.
- Use registered plugins and themes.
- Check if your shared hosting provides has a mechanism to stop propagate the virus from one site to another.
- Check if your website has security measures installed. like Fail2ban services etc.
- Install security plugins such as sucuri, wordfence, ithemes, etc.
- Get designed your website from a renowned company or developer rather than cheap developers who use nulled or pirated scripts and software.
- Check if themes and plugins are of a licensed company and able to receive updates.
- Setup the correct file and directory permission for WordPress
How to Fix Malware
Identify malicious code and non-core files from the WordPress site. You can easily find them with their suspicious names however sometimes it affects the core WordPress files too.
Use plugins such as Sucuri which point out the malicious files, try to fix them the required ones, and delete the unwanted files.
Further, there is a detailed guide by WordPress support which contains useful resources to implement the strategies one by one. Check the security section of the documentation.
I hope this article of wordpress malware guide will help you out in identifying and fixing the malware.
If you are looking for a malware removal service for WordPress site then feel free to contact us, we will remove the malware code of your website to make it clean and secure.
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