Having to face website hacking isn’t beyond imagination but can happen anytime. But you need not stress out, not everything is lost and bouncing back is completely possible. Thousands of websites undergo similar predicaments every day. But in most cases, hacked website repair is possible. All that you need to do is adhere to the following steps for hacked website repair.
Steps to Follow to Recover Your Hacked Website
Take a look at all the easy steps that will help you with hacked website recovery.
Let your Host Know and Conduct Some Research
The primary step in recovering your hacked website is to inform whomsoever is in charge. Tell the company or the individual who is hosting your site the moment you realize that your website has fallen prey to a cyber attack. In most situations, your website host knows how to approach a website.
Additionally, you can conduct research and search for reliable online resources that can help you. Consider seeking professional help from an SEO company if need be at this point. Go around asking for referrals or established companies.
Keep Your Site in Quarantine Mode
The following step to informing your host would be to turn the site off. Keep the site offline and consider keeping it in quarantine mode until you have found a resolution to the problem. While your site wouldn’t offer content anymore to the users. Remember, the content doesn’t serve any purpose anyway since the site is hacked.
Keeping your site offline is an ideal choice. You can meanwhile finish all the administrative jobs first without much interference. Also, people who want to visit your site wouldn’t have to face spam files or malicious codes. This will prevent the users from getting all types of viruses. Reach out to third-party host for hacked website recovery, if you are unable to take your website offline.
Verify Your Site’s Ownership
You would also require to verify the site’s ownership in the use search console. It isn’t unlikely that the hacker has the verified the site’s ownership in the site console. Thereafter, the hacker might even have messed with the settings created on your site. Once you verify the site’s ownership and identify the damages, you can easily understand the attack’s nature.
Determining the Severity of the Attack
The hack’s severity can differ. Look for information in the Security Issues and Message Center in the Search Console. This is because this information can help you to determine the attack’s extent. Hackers are capable of attacking your website in different ways:
- Malware distribution
- Sammy content disbursal to minimize the search result’s quality and relevance.
- Hack for the sake of phishing.
The ways you handle every hacking type can vary. To understand what type of hacking your site is hit with, look for messages in the search console. You might get messages from Google either on malware, spam or phishing.
Evaluation of File System Damage
Now the time has come for a detailed investigation. The hacker might have done several things on your site like leaving backdoors to help hackers re-enter the website later. They might have incorporated modifying existing pages. Or they might have even written functions to show span on clean pages.
You can evaluate the files first that were either modified or created by comparing them to a nice backup in your site. You can also consider checking for access, malicious activities, errors and server logs. Look for failed creation of login attempts from unknown command history and user accounts.
Finding Your Vulnerability
You might have more than one vulnerability and some of them might be simpler to resolve than others. Keep looking since there are multiple odds, based on the hacker’s sophistication. Antivirus scanners wouldn’t be able to identify vulnerabilities. You must also require a vulnerability scanner as well. Some of the common vulnerabilities are:
- Out-of-date software
- Virus-attacked administrator’s PC
- Reused or weak passwords
- Permissive code practices
Keep Your Site Well Maintained
Maintaining your site all the time is just like everything else. The most effective way of achieving a clean site is by cleaning them from time to time. Some of the steps that you can take are:
- Find support sources to assist you when you are handling confidential information loss. In case phishers have attacked your site, be assured that your confidential information is leaked. You might want to consider all regulatory and business responsibilities related to your retailed files and information before you clean the site.
- You have to eliminate the hacker-created new URLs. But make sure not to remove any pages. Avoid removing good pages that were damaged by the hacker simply. Just eliminate the ones that you don’t want to display on search results.
After you are done trying these methods, make sure to ask for a Google review to get your site unflagged. Complete the mentioned-above steps before you ask for a review. In case of professional help in hacked website repair, you can always trust Dubai SEO Company. The team of experts have the right knowledge in helping you get back your website to its normal condition soon after repairing it.