Warning Signs That Your WordPress Website Has Been Hacked

The question “how can I check to see if my WordPress site has indeed been hacked?” is one that we are asked very frequently.

There are several frequent telltale indications that you should look out for in order to determine whether or not your WordPress site has been stolen or otherwise hacked. In this post, we will discuss some of the most frequent warning indications that your WordPress website has been stolen, as well as the steps that you may take to clean up your website.

 A sudden decrease in the number of visitors to the webpage

If you glance at your statistics & notice a dramatic decline in traffic, despite the fact that Analytics is correctly set up, this could be a clue that someone has hacked into your WordPress page. There are several possible explanations for an abrupt decrease in foot traffic. For example, spyware on your business could be sending visitors who are not signed in to spamming webpages. It’s also conceivable that Google’s Private Browsing mode tool is giving people warnings about your webpage, which would explain the abrupt decline in visitors. This would be another possible explanation. Most of the websites are added to Google’s blacklist each day because they contain spyware, and another few thousand are added because they contain scammers. Because of this, every webmaster wants to provide significant consideration to the safety of their WordPress installation. You could see a document for your webpage by using Google’s tool for safe browsing, which you can use to verify it.

Addition of shady connections to your page

One of the frequent indicators that a WordPress site has been hacked is the insertion of information. Thieves will open a gateway on your WordPress, allowing them to make changes to both the WordPress plugins and the WordPress databases. Several of these exploits add connections to sites that are known to host spam. These hyperlinks are placed to the bottom of your webpage bottom the majority of the time; however, they might be placed elsewhere. Even removing the connections does not ensure that they would not be reinstated at a later time. It is necessary for you to locate the door that was utilized to introduce this data into your webpage and then fix it.

Your webpage front page has been tampered 

Because it is prominently displayed on the page of your page, this is likely the one that is the easiest to miss. The majority of efforts to break into your website do not result in the webpage being defaced because the hackers want to go undetected for as long as they can. On the other hand, some attackers may vandalize your webpage in order to broadcast the fact that they have stolen it. These malicious hackers will typically insert their own content into your webpage. Some might even attempt to blackmail site operators for financial gain.

You are having difficulty logging into WordPress:

If you are not able to log into your Blog, then there is a possibility that attackers have destroyed your administrator account from WordPress. If this is the case, you will need to contact WordPress support. You will not be able to modify your passwords using the login since the profile doesn’t really exist. There are several methods available, such as adding a username and password through FTP. Your webpage would continue to be insecure, though, until you determine how the attackers gained access to it in the first place.

Unfamiliar documents and scripting on your website

If you are utilizing a site scanning plugin then you will receive a notification from it whenever it discovers an unknown document or code on your domain controller. You will need to log in to your WordPress website using an FTP client so that you can search for the files. In most cases, the names of these folders are designed to be confusingly identical to those of WordPress’s folders so that they may remain hidden. You would have to perform an audit of the files & folder architecture in order to identify them on your own. However, erasing these documents does not ensure that they cannot be recovered at a later time.

 Your website is often slow or unresponsive

All websites on the internet can become the target of a random denial of service or DDoS attacks. These attacks use several hacked computers and servers from all over the world using fake IP addresses. Sometimes they are just sending too many requests to your server, while other times they are actively trying to break into your website. Any such activity will make your website slow, unresponsive, and unavailable. You can check your server logs to see which IPs are making too many requests and block them, but that may not fix the problem if there are too many or if the hackers change IP addresses. It is also possible that the assault was unsuccessful and that your WordPress is just running slowly. Both of these scenarios are possible. In this case, it is imperative that you read through our guide in its entirety so that you can speed up and enhance the functionality of WordPress. It is not acceptable for your website to contain any pop-up windows or pop-under adverts.

These types of hackers attempt to make money by redirecting traffic from your website to their own Sammy adverts and then showing those advertising to the traffic that was previously directed to your website. When user browses a web address, they are not presented with these popups if they are signed in to their accounts or if they browse the page directly. Individuals who have arrived at the webpage through search results are the only ones who can see them. Pop-under commercials are adverts that debut in a new window and yet are hidden from the user point of view. These advertising are also known as in-line advertising. If customers are abruptly redirected to a website that they are not acquainted with, this is an additional important sign that your webpage may have been stolen. Another sign that your website may have been hacked is if it sends users to an unfamiliar domain. This is an indicator that the website may have been compromised. The fact that this attack does not redirect users who are already logged in contributes to the fact that it is usually overlooked. In addition to this, there is a possibility that it will not redirect users who access the webpage by manually typing the address into their browser. This is a possibility but not a guarantee. These kinds of hacks are typically brought about by the presence of a backdoor or malware that has been installed on your website.

Securing and Fixing Your Hacked WordPress Site

The process of cleaning up a WordPress website that has been compromised may be quite disagreeable & challenging. For this reason, industry experts recommend that you let professionals clean up your website. It is the solution to the problem of website security that we implement on each and every one of our websites. If you want to clean up your webpage on your own, have a look at our beginner’s instructions on repairing a hacked WordPress Website. It will walk you through the process step-by-step. It will take you through each stage of the process in sequential order.

Keeping Your WordPress Website Secure from Future Attacks

After your webpage has been thoroughly cleaned, you can then take steps to make it more secure by making it very challenging for cybercriminals to obtain access to your website. When it comes to the process of protecting a WordPress website, one of the steps that must be completed is the establishment of additional layers of security surrounding your page. For instance, if you combine the usage of strong credentials with two-step authentication, you will be able to safeguard the administrative part of your WordPress installation from unauthorized login attempts. In a like fashion, you can protect crucial WordPress files and folders by either restricting who can access them or by defining the permissions for WordPress files and directories very carefully.

Conclusion:

We sincerely hope that this post was helpful to you in teaching you the signs to look for in a WordPress site that has been hacked, and we thank you in advance for taking the time to read it.