What to do after your website is hacked?
The following step-by-step plan is far-reaching and requires a reasonable amount of technical expertise. You are going to completely reinstall your website, because malware has often nestled deep into WordPress. The disadvantage of this method is that you will have to set up a lot of things again (plugins, themes).
However, even this is not a guarantee that your site is completely free of malware again. Often the site seems clean again, but there is still a back door behind which allowed attackers to gain access again, even now that the website was up-to-date. As a result, cleaning up a website can seem frustrating and unrealistic. We therefore recommend that, if you are not sure of your own technical knowledge, you hire someone who specializes in website security.
If you do not make frequent changes to your website, and are reasonably sure when the website has been infected, you can also have a backup of the website put back . Sometimes, however, infections remain unnoticed for months, and the backup also contains the malware.
Step-by-step plan after infection
1. Scan your own computer
Scan before you start your own PC for malware with a malware scanner, such as MalwareBytes , at least 1 that you have not yet had on your computer. It may be that you have become infected by visiting your own website, or the cause of the infection may have been malware on your own computer
2. Adjust passwords
Reset your FTP password via the Control Panel at https://ac.managedomain.nl/.
3. Download backup
Use an FTP program to download a backup of all your files to your own computer via FTP. Download the entire folder www / in your domain by dragging it to a local folder. Depending on the size of your website, this can take up to several hours. We recommend that you also download a backup of your database (database backups are included in the .databases folder). If you do not know which database is in use, you can read this from the www / wp-config.php file on the line starting with: define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘Fabcd1234_wp0’);
In this case, "Fabcd1234_wp0" is the database in use.Tip: Make an extra backup of the database via the wp-admin / panel. You can export the textual content of your website via the menu Tools-> Export. If it goes wrong with these steps, then you have at least all your texts, which you can always import into a clean WordPress installation.
4. Reinstall WordPress
In this step we remove the files from the current website, so are you sure that the downloading of the backup via FTP (step 3) has been completed? The database, which contains all your texts, is not removed, and you can use it again in the next step. Reinstall WordPress now through the Control Panel. Do not you know how? Then check our page to reinstall wordPress.
Note: If you used a very outdated version of WordPress, you will need to restore that specific version via FTP, because your (outdated) database will not be able to work with the latest version of WordPress.
5. Take your old database back into use
Surf to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ to create new keys. In the backup from step 3, which is on your computer, there is a file called wp-config.php. Open this file in your favorite text editor, and replace the keys (usually reasonably at the bottom). Overwrite the www / wp-config.php file on the new installation via FTP. This will put the old database back into use again.
6. Look in your backup for suspicious files in the uploads folder
Search the backup on your computer in the following folder: www / wp-content / uploads / to * .php files. They almost never belong here. If you find files with this extension, open them on your computer with a text editor to see if they are malicious files, or simply delete them all. Added code is often concealed, packed in eg BASE64 format and / or GZIP'ed.
7. Restore your uploaded files
Now put the folder www / wp-content / uploads / back via FTP by uploading it in its entirety.
8. Reinstall your plugins and theme
Download all plugins in use via the wp-admin / panel.
Re-download your theme, and install it.
Tip: You can look in the backup on your computer in the "www / wp-content / plugins" folder to see which ones you have all used, and the name of your theme is in "www / wp-content / themes" .
Important! Do not put the plugins and theme itself back from the backup, because these now almost always contain backdoors so your website is immediately hacked again.
9. Suspicious users
Check WordPress for suspicious users (remove them), and change all administrator passwords. Always use a strong password of at least 10 characters.
10. WordFence Plugin
Install the Wordfence plugin and scan your website for problems. Wordfence checks, among other things, whether WordPress files have been modified, but does not find all the malware hidden in, for example, plugins or themes.
Not all adjustments necessarily have to indicate an infection (for example a language change). You can view the differences in files yourself via "View details".
11. See if all plugins and your theme are still supported
Update all CMS software, plugins and themes. Check that all software is still supported by the developer. Sometimes plugins are included with themes, but then not updated (recently for example revslider ). If in doubt, ask your theme developer for help.
12. Go through all your pages and posts
View the content of each page and post with the Text editor to see if any malicious links or code has been added.
13. Set a new database password
Reset the database password via PhpMyAdmin, and change this data to wp-config.php. You can read the data for logging in from the file "www / wp-config.php".
14. Scan is a website
Use websites such as http://unmaskparasites.com and http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/ and http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=www.jouwwebsite.nl (note, replace your domain name the last url) to scan your website for suspicious links. Note that these scanners are only an addition to other steps and certainly can not indicate whether your website is still infected.
Additional information and a general step-by-step plan can also be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters/hacked/
Need help?
Despite these steps, it is quite possible that you have missed any malware left behind, so that the website gets infected again and again. If you can not figure it out yourself, we can help you to clean up and update your website *, please contact us . We have extensive experience with malware infections, allowing us to track and remove them efficiently.
* this service is only available for CodeOrange customers. Prices are subject to change and exclusive of VAT.
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