9 Simple Steps to Follow If Your Site Has Been Hacked
If your head is generating terms like unthinkable has happened, my site has been hacked what do I do now, and so on. There is no need to worry as hundreds of sites face the same crisis, and most of them get back to their original glory. You need to understand, all is not lost, and you can bounce back.
All you need to do is go along with the following steps given below, and you will get your website back. We are beginning by presuming that you must know the answers of how to check if I have been hacked, how to check my website is hacked or not, etc. types of queries.
Call Your Host and Do Some Research
It is essential to inform the person who is in charge of your site. Call your web host as soon as you detect that your website is being hacked. Whether it is a company or individual, your web host will know how to deal with the situation better than you would.
Your host company may take some time as it may have many customers on the same server. The company will check other sites to ensure that they are not hacked. With this, you need to do some research and find out some reputable online resources instead of worrying about things like "my site has been hacked what do I do". If you are not satisfied with the response you have got from your original host, find some professionals.
It is always good to go with the professionals of the specific field. You should find a reputable company which can provide you a team of experts to handle this crisis.
Shut your Website Down
You should shut down your website until recovery as soon as you find out about the attack. It is always essential to quarantine your website so that experts can focus on administrative tasks without any interference. It also prevents your users from accessing the malicious content of your site.
Check Ownership of your Site
You need to verify ownership of your site to detect the nature of the attack. It is quite possible that the attacker has gained access to your ownership panel and messed with the settings. Only by verifying your ownership to the site, you can identify the damage.
Quantity of Damage
The severity of damage can vary and depends on the motives of an attacker. A hacker can attack your website in several ways like:
- He can lay out spammy content to reduce the quality of your website
- Attack for phishing
- He can distribute malware to destroy your website
The expert team can repair your website after knowing the type of attack. You may have received messages from Google regarding phishing, malware, and spam.
Damage Assessment
It’s time to dig in more depth. An attacker may have created new pages, inserted malware in existing pages, or left backdoors to allow himself to re-enter your site later. You can identify changes done on your website by matching it up with the latest backup of your site.
Identify your Weakness
You may have possessed more than one weakness, which allowed the hacker to intrude into your site. Once you find one, don’t rest here as you can have multiple loopholes like:
- Outdated Software
- Easy to guess and Reused Passwords
- Virus Infected Administrator’s System
Clean and Maintain the Website
You have to delete all the URLs created by the hacker on your website. Take a note while you are doing this, don’t delete any useful pages that were damaged by the attacker as it may contain important information about your site. You could ask the experts to repair these pages.
Clean Your Server
You can initiate the process by restoring the latest backup of your site. You should change all the passwords and choose a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers. After this, eliminate all the plugins, widgets, and applications which are no longer in use. Take note, what you are doing is just a reinstallation of your website, ask the team of experts to upgrade the security of the database and server of your site.
Request a Review
Finally, you have arrived on the last step in which you have to request a review from Google as it has already flagged your website. To make it visible for your users, you need to inform Google that now your site is cleaned.
The Final Words
You have to keep some patience to see your website online again. If you want a regular and constant checkup against attackers and malware, you can ask cWatch, which is quite famous for maintaining high-level security.
An EDR is a program designed to detect and remove viruses and other kinds of malicious software from your computer or laptop.
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