Overview
Website vulnerability is a very important subject. More and more business owners are getting hacked which can potentially cripple their business.
Commonly a hacker will access your website through a vulnerability, that may be due to not maintaining a strong password, using an outdated script or incorrect file permissions. The hacking of your website could be due to financial gain, through spamming links on your website about a pharmaceutical company or injecting your site with malware that has a flow on effect infecting your websites visitors.
Google have created a great video that explains website hacking for the business owner.
Instructions
When you have discovered you have been hacked or there is a vulnerability the first them you should do it contact us. We will be able to provide you assistance and paid options to recover your website.
- Tell us that your website has been compromised. We will recommend next steps forward.
- Take a data backup of all your hacked files.
- Take the service offline for resolution. Depending on the level of hacking it is important that your website is taken offline so that your users are not effected. If we have discovered your website is hacked we would have suspended the web hosting for your account and sent you confirmation.
- Check your account. Ensure that there are no additional users created. If accounts have been created, write down the account names and delete the accounts.
- Change the passwords. Change all passwords on the account (Web hosting, FTP, Database, CMS) and Admin Panel. We also recommend scanning any computers used to access your web hosting account, you may find that is where the vulnerability is located.
- Add your site to Google Webmaster Tools. If your website has been hacked it may be blacklisted on search engines, creating a Google Webmaster account will provide you with a means of de-listing once your have removed the spam or malware from your account. Importantly it will provide you with more detailed information of whether the hacking is spam or malware and the located of the hacked files. This will aid in rectifying the issue.
- Restoration. Delete all files on your website hosting server. Upload a clean backup of your website files. We maintain backups of your website, please contact our support department to complete a restoration.
- Update Scripts/File Permissions/Passwords. It is important to understand how the hacker gained access to your website hosting. Once you have identified the vulnerability you can rectify it.
More Information
Google have completed a comprehensive support document relating to the steps required to identify, asssess and clean a website once it has been hacked. We suggest reading and watching the supporting material found on the Google Support site.
