What’s website hacking?
When a website is modified or exploited through unauthorized access, it’s known as a website hack.
Common reasons for hacking:
The most common reasons for website hacking are to steal sensitive data, disrupt the website’s functionality, or inject malicious codes.
Common types of website hacking include:
- Data theft: Stealing personal or business data from the website’s database.
- Website defacement: Displaying spam content or messages instead of the actual website content.
- Malware injection: Forcing website visitors to click links that enable or activate harmful software.
- Phishing attacks: Capturing users’ login credentials that they enter on a fake login page. This fake login page is created by hackers to trick users.
- DDoS Attacks: Overloading a website’s server to make it inaccessible
Why do websites get hacked?
- Outdated software or plugins
- Weak passwords
- Poor or insecure web hosting
- SQL injection
- XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
- Phishing
- Malware
Fixing a hacked website
Step #1: Identify
The first step is to identify if your website is hacked. Below are some of the indicators or signs that show your website is hacked:
- Unusual behavior (slow loading, redirects, or errors).
- Modified or missing website contents
- Browser displaying warnings like “This site may be hacked.”
- Login credentials are not working.
Step #2: Take the website offline
Once you confirm that your website is hacked, the next step is to take the website offline first. This is done to protect the sensitive data of your users.
Step #3: Restore Backup
The next step is to restore any of the recent backups (if you have) of your website to fix the downtime. Your web hosting server should have some of the recent backups that you can use to restore and make the website up and running.
Step #4: Scan for malware
After taking the website offline and restoring your previous backup, you must scan the website for malware. You can either do this on your local system or deploy the website to a test/temporary location that’s not accessible to the users.
Step #5: Clean the website
The next step after scanning is to clean the website by removing the files or pieces of codes that are suspicious. You may like to seek assistance from a professional website builder to do this for you. It’s because even a minor mistake can break the functionality of your website.
Step #6: Deploy the updated website
After the website is cleaned and scanned again, the next step is to deploy the updated website to the server.
Step #7: Change all passwords
After making the website live, the next step is to change all the crucial passwords for all the important areas such as control panel, FTP, database, admin, etc. This is to minimize the possibility for the website to get infected again.
Step #8: Update all the plugins and CMS software
It’s always important that you keep checking and updating all the required plugins and CMS software of your website. Outdated plugins and obsolete CMS software are highly vulnerable to malware infections. It can make your website an easy target for cyber threats. To ensure safety, it is therefore vital to maintain the website regularly.
Step #9: Add additional security
Below are some of the ways in which web developers add security to the websites:
- Set appropriate file permissions (e.g., 644 for files, 755 for directories).
- Install an SSL certificate to encrypt data transmission.
- Apply security patches immediately when released.
- Use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
- Enable logging and real-time monitoring to detect suspicious activities.
- Use strong database passwords and limit database user privileges.
Step #10: Regularly maintain your website
Maintaining a website regularly is very crucial. Most webmasters and website owners ignore to maintain their website or hire a professional developer to maintain their website. Your website builder may charge you a nominal monthly maintenance fee to take care of your website. This fee is really worth it.
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