Malware attacks are a major security threat for any website owner. Many attacks are carefully crafted by large criminal gangs with financial motives. With over 40% of all sites on the Internet now being powered by WordPress, it is a prime target for hackers.
Malware, short for malicious software, is any software that has been installed on your site without your knowledge or permission. Such software is designed to do something you don’t want it to do, from placing hidden files on your visitors’ devices to defacing your site to encrypting your website files and even holding your data for ransom.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of site security and what a WordPress malware removal service entails. We will also look into cleaning up malware from your WordPress site, and how AUQ works to thoroughly remove any malware threat from your WordPress website.
Why is Site Security Important?
While all malware is undesirable, WordPress malware can be particularly dangerous to the reputation of your organization. It can also be transmitted to the computers and mobile devices of visitors to your site. Alongside the threat of data loss, malware can steal sensitive customer information including banking credentials stored on your website. The worst part is that it may not even need to be downloaded as malware can steal the information directly from your hacked website, costing you lost revenue, as well as reputational harm.
What Does WordPress Malware Removal Service Entail?
Removing WordPress malware correctly is a complex process. We first have to identify what specific malware attack method has been used—and it is often more than one. The next step is to find all of the WordPress website files and database entries that have been affected and restore them to where they were before the attack—which may have happened in multiple stages over days or weeks. Finally, we need to update all important files and fix any other vulnerabilities to prevent the hacked WordPress site from being reinfected.
How Do I Clean My WordPress Website?
To clean the malware from a hacked WordPress site, you can either hire a professional WordPress security specialist or try removing the virus yourself. To remove the virus yourself, you need to have some technical skills. This will only work if your malware infection is not too serious.
There are several necessary steps you will need to follow in order to clean malware from your WordPress website yourself:
Step 1: Backup Your WordPress Core Files
Start by backing up your existing site including the WordPress core files, plugins, themes, uploads, and database.
Step 2: Password Protect Your WordPress Site
It’s important to secure your WordPress website with a password so that nobody else can access it and spread the infection.
Step 3: Check the Log Files
Check your log files for any recent changes or access requests that seem unusual. Remove any files from your Uploads directory that you do not recognize.
Step 4:Change WordPress Salts and Other Passwords
Here are a few places where you should immediately change credentials:
- Change the WordPress salts in your wp-config.php file
- Change access keys used by third-party services.
- Change all passwords for hosting, FTP, the WordPress Admin interface, and any other associated services.
Step 5: Reinstall WordPress Core Files
Delete and reinstall the newest version of all WordPress core files. Remove any unnecessary plugins and update all WordPress plugins to their newest versions.
Step 6: Run the WordPress malware removal plugin
Install and run the best WordPress malware removal plugin (listed in the FAQ).
Step 7: Check Google Search Console Status
A malware attack can often get your WordPress website blacklisted. If that’s the case, then head over to Google Search Console to determine if your WordPress site has been blacklisted. If so, then request a review to have it removed immediately.
Website owners with advanced technical skills may also want to:
- Compare the WordPress core files and plugin files from the infected backup with those on the cleaned site to look for signs of suspicious activity and determine more details about the type of malware.
- Now, export the newly cleaned database to an SQL file, and compare the SQL file from the backup with one made from the cleaned site.
- Move on to examining the new SQL file for any malware that the plugin might have missed.
- Remove any .php files from outside the WordPress installation itself that should not be there.
- If your site utilizes .htacess files, examine them for signs of malware infection, then examine your server configuration to look for security threats and determine the root cause of malware infection.
Why Hire WordPress Experts to Remove the Malware from Your WordPress Site
As a business owner, if your site is a critical part of your business, you should strongly consider hiring an expert WordPress malware removal service, like AUQ. Here are some of the reasons why:
- The cost of site downtime or stolen data is far more expensive than using a professional WordPress malware removal service.
- The best malware removal services will be familiar with accepted best practices for identifying security threats and preventing future hacks and unauthorized access.
- Hackers today are incredibly sophisticated. Many attacks are carefully crafted by large criminal gangs with financial motives. You need a company with an equal level of skill and experience to remove malware completely and ensure that the site is secured against future attacks.
- Effectively combating malware requires in-depth knowledge of the Web server software, and in some cases, the host operating system, as well as WordPress itself.
- Multi-layer attacks are common. Can you be sure that you or your Web-savvy friend or relative has removed ALL the malware and not just the part that was designed to be easy to detect?
- Your WordPress site is a key business component. Every minute that it is compromised is potentially costing you money.
- An infected site could cause you to be blacklisted by the major search engines, destroying your Google rankings and wasting the time and money you have spent optimizing your website SEO.
- New malware, especially any that exploit so-called zero-day vulnerabilities that have only just been discovered, will not be detected by most malware removal plugins or online malware scanners.
- A small mistake could leave deeply embedded malware hidden on your site, or cause problems that will be very hard to identify and fix later.
- Even most professional website developers are not qualified to diagnose and remove many of the modern malware infestations.
- Continued monitoring is critical. Hackers will often have programmed a bot to revisit your site at regular intervals and re-inject the malicious code if the site has been cleaned or restored.
- Finding the root cause of malware infection is difficult, but it’s the most crucial step to remove malware. If you fail to find all security issues and fix all vulnerabilities the right way, a second infection can be much more damaging. Clients and other visitors are much less forgiving if a site is infected a second time after they have been assured that the malware has been neutralized.
- The AUQ team includes WordPress security experts with decades of experience in fighting malware and other security issues, including engineering backgrounds with leading antivirus and network security companies.
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How We Remove WordPress Malware from Client Sites
The exact steps required will depend upon the nature of the malware, but the goal is always the same; remove the malware and get your site back online and safe to visit as quickly as possible, while securing it against future intrusions. The process has several stages.
Step 1: Secure the Existing WordPress Site
To provide immediate protection to site visitors, we need to get the infected site offline as quickly as possible. We first back up your site files and database to our secure server. If you have a known good backup available, we restore that. If not, we take the site offline and post a notice that it is down for maintenance and will return soon.
Step 2: Diagnose the Malware and Vulnerabilities
This is where the real work starts, and where AUQ’s expertise is critical.
Working with the files we backed up, we identify the exact type or types of malware that have been used against your site. Using both professional tools and manual inspection, we follow best practices to carefully examine your site, including the database, custom theme files, WordPress core files, and WordPress plugins to locate and identify the malware and determine how it infected your WordPress site.
Finally, we look for the root cause of the vulnerability, examining the above files as well as your server software itself to determine how the malware was able to attack your site.
Step 3: Clean Your WordPress Site
Once we diagnose the exact cause, we move on to cleaning your WordPress website. That involves removing the malware itself and fixing any damage it has done to your data.
Generally, we take the following steps to clean up your WordPress website:
- Inspect your database for any content that was injected by the malware, and remove it.
- Remove any WordPress plugins that are unnecessary or that have been identified as security vulnerabilities.
- Update WordPress core files to the newest version.
- Update WordPress plugins to their newest versions.
Step 4: Fix the Vulnerabilities
Lastly, we need to fix any problems on the server that allowed the malware to reach your WordPress site. This could include:
- Installing updated versions of server software such as PHP and MySQL
- Adding or configuring a web application firewall (WAF)
- Removing suspicious or unnecessary users from the server or WordPress
- Preventing unauthorized access
- Installing WordPress security plugins
- Moving your site to a more security-focused hosting platform
Types of WordPress Malware We have Encountered and Fixed
There are now many types of malware in addition to the traditional viruses you have already heard so much about. The categories are vaguely defined and often overlap or are combined with other types or types. Some are not actually WordPress malware in themselves but are often used to find and/or exploit vulnerabilities in the site that will allow malware to be deployed. AUQ will provide protection against all of them.
Viruses
The original malware, and a term that is something of a catch-all for many types of malware. Essentially, this is any type of infection that replicates itself once it is triggered by an event such as a visitor clicking a button on your site.
Worms
Are very similar to viruses in that they are self-replicating, but they do not require that a specific action be taken by a user or visitor.
Trojans
Trojans are files that hide in plain site by being disguised as other, desirable files. They are often used as part of a multi-faceted attack.
Bots and botnets
Short for “robot,” a bot is a software program that performs tasks without direct user control. A botnet is a network of bots that can then be used to overwhelm the security safeguards of a target computer.
Ransomware
This is software that encrypts the files on your or a visitor’s computer and then requests a ransom to give you instructions on how to decrypt it.
Spyware
Malware that is designed to silently read important information such as banking login credentials and send it to a remote server. Spywares attack in silence, which is why it takes some time for the hacked website to show the effects.
Fileless malware
Fileless malware deploys no files itself, making it very difficult to detect. Instead, it scans the Internet looking for specific vulnerabilities in WordPress core files, plugins, or even the server software itself, then injects an exploit directly into the memory of the computer.
Malvertising
Similar to adware which can sometimes be found on application software. The software is often combined with a drive-by download attack to insert malicious code into ads on legitimate advertising networks.
Keyloggers
Keylogger records computer keystrokes. When deployed on a WordPress site, they can be used to find sensitive data, which can then be delivered to a remote site.
Malnets
These are networks of malware-infected devices that can be used for many kinds of automated attacks.
Backdoors
A backdoor lets an attacker access your WordPress site via a method you did not expect and have not guarded against. It can be used to inject malicious code to take control of the site, or just to create a way for a following attack to gain access to your site.
Drive-by downloads
This is a very sophisticated attack that allows attackers to target visitors to your site. They first take advantage of a vulnerability on your site to take control of it and inject code that will cause a visitor’s browser to download code from another site under the attacker’s control.
SEO Spam, AKA Pharma Hacks
In an SEO spam attack, the hacker injects code into your website that will show up on Google search engine results. It originally was used to promote pharmaceutical products, hence the name, but can now be for any purpose.
Malicious Redirects
We have all encountered redirects while surfing the internet. As the name indicates, malicious redirects will redirect a user to a website other than yours. However, malicious redirects can not only display advertisements but might also attempt to download malicious code onto the visitor’s device.
Phishing
Phishing is a very common cyberattack technique where the hacker attacks by placing malicious code on your WordPress site. The code is generally designed to steal sensitive information from your visitors like login credentials to financial or email accounts.
Hacktools
Hacktools, short for hacking tools are software programs that don’t fit any specific category but allow hackers to perform a wide variety of unwanted tasks. Some common hacktools are password checkers and SQL injection tools.