Today, security has become one of the most important things and should be considered by website and blog owners on priority. At times, using free themes or a plug-in for WordPress can bring unchecked bugs on a website where security gets hampered and end up with having a compromised website that needs a lot of fixes to get it back to normal. So what to do when this happens? What steps to take when the website gets infected with a malicious virus and take full control of your web application?
My WordPress website is hacked, what should I do now?
Believe me, this is more common than you might imagine, often the hacker “mine” the failure, leaving it hidden, just collecting your user’s information that may be sensitive, such as user data, passwords, bank details, number of credit cards and other information. In this article, we will discuss how hackers can enter the website via the application and how we can correct this problem if it happens.
How Hackers Act?
At first keep in mind that if a person who can get into your WordPress application is not foolish if he does, he is smart enough to take advantage of this flaw and steal your data. You will not even know what is happening and won’t be able to correct the fault instantly. This makes it difficult to detect the fault and consequently, you will not even know where the problem came from, so the failure will persist while it extracts the application data in a silent mode.
Practices Used to Infect Your Site
Hackers are getting more sophisticated before there were many “deface”, which were to change the home page of the WordPress installation with the intention to “mock” or make safety laughingstock. But now with growth in the area, it is of greater interest to obtain data contained in the application. Depending on the scope of application, it may have sensitive data as mentioned above; even falling credit card data into the wrong hands can become a big headache.
What we should consider first is to understand how website ends up getting infected. Well … That’s a half long subject, but try to understand the most important points for success in this practice.
The most widely used way basically noticed and discussed with other professionals and identified as most traditional is the inclusion of instructions on the website files. By exploring a flaw in the design that application was built, it is possible to inject malicious instructions often used for primary information that will give access to the interior of the application. This information often consists of cookies, sessions or any other data used to impersonate user who is logged in.
These instructions may also contain parts that create other failures. But how so? From a flaw, hackers inject other files to make it easier to explore/get the information contained in the application. To find a flaw, the hacker uses the vulnerability level to drive a corresponding attack. An example would be: Imagine a flaw that allows a malicious user to inject arbitrary PHP code. It can, therefore, create an internal instruction that allows the upload of other PHP code, this can compromise security because this user can send WebShells (file that explores information and files on server) or create SQL queries and therefore gain an entire list of users contained on the website.
Environment Setup
First of all, before you even think of directing the focus, create an alternative test environment, preferably to be in a local environment, since performance is higher and you do not touch anything in your production environment, you will be safe during corrections because if any problems occur, it will not affect your software.
How to Repair Your Hacked WordPress Website?
To repair a WordPress installation, you need to clear the core files of WordPress, the database, themes and plug-in. Generally, the problems are the themes and plug-in, but as these make up the installation, they can serve as a gateway to the core files.
Identifying Problems
In most cases, infected files have functions such as eval () and str_rot13 () that encode a string hindering understanding of why it was there or what it does. This string used in eval () executed as PHP code, so we must find these functions that can expose your installation to vulnerabilities within search code.
These functions exist in the main languages used in the core and WordPress plug-in, stay tuned to them and remove them. These encoded strings may also be present in your database that can be retrieved and executed arbitrarily leading to side effects that may impair your installation.
Updating
Another important point is to update all components, so the update will overwrite the infected files which will free you from the problems. It is good to be aware of the fact that if there are files with different names from those in the updates, these will not be overwritten, so we need to go back and hit the same button to search for strings that may contain statements that failed your WordPress installation.
After upgrading, make sure that everything is in order before you upload your changes to a production server. Often these updates may lead to unexpected behavior, since updates are nothing more than improvements in the software in question. These improvements involve changing the current state they are in your application, so always make sure everything is working before performing the update in a production environment.
Conclusion
Common sense is always most important. If your site is hacked or broken and you have not mastered the subject well, it is better to opt help from some expert. If you detect any irregularity, turn off the edited themes and plug-in right away. Place a maintenance page and correct the problem before it becomes a snowball and your data or your customers’ data is compromised.
We hope this article was helpful.
