How to tell if your website has been hacked

Most hacked websites do not show a skull on the home page. The attacker wants your site to keep working so they can use it quietly, to send spam, steal customers or sell fake products. Here is how to spot the signs and what to do about them.

Signs your site may be hacked

• Visitors land on the wrong site. Your page redirects to a strange address, often only on phones or when people arrive from Google.
• Google shows a warning. Search results say "This site may be hacked" or your browser shows a red warning page.
• Search results show things you did not write. Pages about pills, casinos or fake shops appear under your domain.
• You see users you did not create. An unknown administrator account is a common backdoor.
• Your site suddenly slows down. Hidden scripts use your server's power.
• Your host emails you. Hosts suspend sites that send spam.
• Files change on their own. New files appear in your folders, or old ones change date.

Check in five minutes

1. Search Google for your own site. Type site:yourbusiness.com into Google. Look for pages or titles you do not recognise.
2. Open your site on your phone, using mobile data, not your office wifi. Some attacks only show to visitors from search.
3. Look at your user list in your site's admin area. Remove anyone you do not know.
4. Run a scan. A free Huupa scan checks for known malware signs, expired certificates and weak settings from the outside.

What to do first

Do not delete everything

Deleting files in a panic can destroy the evidence of how they got in, and the hole stays open. Work calmly and in order.

Change your passwords

Change the passwords for your site admin, hosting account, email and database, in that order. Use long, unique ones.

Restore a clean backup

If you have a backup from before the problem started, restore it. This is why daily backups matter. If you have no backup, a clean-up must remove the malware and the way back in.

Update everything

Out-of-date software is the most common way in. Update your site software, themes and plugins, and remove any you do not use.

How to make it harder next time

• Use two-step login on every admin account.
• Keep software updated.
• Back up every day, and keep copies off the server.
• Scan every day, so you find problems in hours, not months.

Huupa does the last two for you. It scans your site every day, repairs what it finds with AI, and takes a restore point before every fix so you can undo it.

Questions