Tips to Prevent Your WordPress Site from Hacking

Securing any website has become a task of daily routine. Nowadays, a website directory contains important data that needs a high level of security to be saved from the hands of malware attackers. This WordPress security guide will help you ensure the safety of your website.

This blog will let you know the common causes behind your hacked website and provide some WordPress security tips that will prevent your WordPress website from hacking.

How Websites Get Hacked?

Why do websites get hacked? Websites get hacked because cybercriminals make money through spammy backlinks, ransomware, and collecting and selling people’s data. There are several reasons why a WordPress website gets hacked. The following are some of the ways that unscrupulous people gain access to a website:

• Inferiorly secured web hosting. Weak server configuration, for instance, or a lack of separation between websites.
• Outdated WordPress core, themes, or plugins. Often, they contain known security flaws that hackers can exploit easily.
• Weakened login credentials. Typically, credentials are leaked in another breach, by brute-force attacks, or acquired via phishing. 
• Injection attacks. A website with inferior security may allow hackers to execute scripts to gain access to the database and inject malicious code, or breach it. 
• Extensions from unreliable sources. Unofficial or nulled themes or plugins often contain hidden malware and backdoors. 

Steps to Take When Your WordPress Website is Hacked

Today, hackers try every move possible to get on your WordPress website and control your data. Moreover, they will never stop trying; thus, it makes a lot of sense that we, too, should never stop protecting our websites. Some of the major reasons why a WP site gets hacked include weak passwords, lack of monitoring, vulnerable themes and/or plugins, inferior backups, insecure hosting, and weak login security. 

Keep in mind that the more data you have, the more prone you are to cyber-attacks. In some instances, you can’t discount the fact that there are some criminal-minded competitors who are hell-bent on taking down your business; thus, hiring a hacker becomes the best solution for them. 

What then should you do? The following are steps to take when your website gets hacked.

• Isolate the Website: For multiple websites hosted on the same server, you can prevent the spread of the infection by isolating the hacked site. This could involve temporarily taking the website offline.
• Look for the Problem: Get yourself together and locate the areas where the problem is carefully. Are you able to login to your website? Is it getting redirected to another website? Is there a suspicious account? These are just some of the things to take into account. 
• Run a Diagnosis: Run the malware removal services that could remove any installed malware on your site. 
• Change Passwords: Change the passwords on your WP website for all user accounts, which include administrators, editors, and contributors.
• Clean the Database: Check it for suspicious content or unauthorized changes. Restore modified entries or tables to their original state. 
• Update Themes and Plugins: Anything that’s outdated, such as your themes and plugins, should be updated. However, if the attack is not on the theme or plugin, it can still impact the updated themes and plugins. 
• Scan for Malware: A security plugin or a third-party malware scanning tool can help you scan the site for malware and malicious code. 
• Contact the Hosting Provider: The professionals from your hosting provider can help you better. They can determine if there are other websites on the same server that are also affected, or if there may be no actual attack. It’s always better to cross-check with them. 
• Review User Accounts: Audit the list of registered users and remove unauthorized or unfamiliar accounts. Make sure that there are no unauthorized administrators. 
• Notify Visitors: If the hack exposed sensitive user data, comply with the data breach notification laws and inform the affected users of the attack.

Why is Improving WordPress Website Security Necessary?

A website is home to much important data and content. We firmly suggest that you always follow WordPress development coding standards to secure your website as well as improve its performance.

With the advancing technology, there comes a need for a WordPress development service provider to keep up with the challenging world. This becomes difficult when a hacker tries to disturb your IT infrastructure while breaking security barriers.

Any website holds visitors’ personal information like IP address or Google account credentials. This raises a necessity to save them from being hacked and leaked publicly. Hacking directly affects WordPress website performance.

Changes You will See If Your Site is Hacked

1. Your files can auspiciously be submitted to PHP backdoors.
2. You will get a warning from your web host stating that your website contains malware.
3. You will get to see unknown pop-ups not created by your developers.
4. Your live files can be changed or modified.
5. Malware codes can be added to your coding database.
6. Your website can lead to many other defective websites.
7. Other restricted users can access your admin directory.
8. Your website can become a box of spamming pictures or posts.
9. Google may restrict your visitors from using your site with a warning of an unprotected website.

Securing your data is not a secondary task. Move on to the various causes and fix them before any threat to prevent your WordPress website from hacking.

Causes and Fixes behind Your Hacked WordPress Website

With more than 43.2% of websites running on WordPress, it’s the most popular content management system today. Unfortunately, its popularity also means that it’s prone to all kinds of cybercriminals who exploit its security vulnerabilities.

Check out the best practices and fixes to protect a WordPress website from hacking.

1. Regularly Update the WordPress Version

WordPress regularly releases software updates to boost security and performance, thus protecting your site from cyber attacks. Updating WordPress is one of the simplest ways to boost website security.

2. Create Strong Passwords

If you’re still using a weak password or use the same one for all your accounts, then it’s time to switch to a unique and strong username and password to secure your WordPress site. A strong password is something that is difficult to guess. Moreover, it should have a lot of characters, which includes a mix of lowercase and uppercase letters, symbols, and numbers.

3. Limit Login Attempts

Take the login security further by limiting login attempts. This is one of the best ways to prevent brute force attacks that attempt to gain website access. There are plugin tools that can help you limit the login attempts.

4. Use a Firewall

A firewall helps block connections from malicious IP addresses, preventing hackers from stealing your credentials and logging into your WordPress website.

5. Upgrade to HTTPS

Web giants like Google are pushing towards HTTPS for website encryption. HTTPS is so important not just to look good for potential visitors, but having HTTPS in place also prevents data from being intercepted while transmitted across connections through encryption while in transit. This protects data not only from malicious attacks but also from ISPs and intrusive companies that want to monitor your data.

6. Move the WordPress Login URL

One way to make your site extra secure is to change the login page. It’s common knowledge that to log into the site, it only takes adding /wp-admin to the end of the URL. When you change the link, you can hide the entryway to your site effectively, making it harder for hackers to find. 

There are several ways to change the login URL. So with the WPS Hide Login, you can easily change your WordPress login URL to a unique URL. Nevertheless, you should remember what you change the URL to, and don’t forget to share it with any other website collaborators, including your hosting provider or your clients.

7. Perform Regular Backups

By doing regular backups, you can restore a clean version of your WordPress site quickly should anything go wrong. Implement a strategy to run automated backups without having to do it manually so that your weekly backups will always be done. 

Consider storing backups in several locations to ensure that you can retrieve any version, if, for instance, the cloud fails. Occasionally, test your backups to make sure that they are properly restored.

8. Set up Blocklist and Safelist for the Admin Page

Enabling URL lockdown protects the login page from brute force attacks and unauthorised IP addresses. There are web application firewall services for WordPress to help you do that. 

You can also restrict access to your login page by configuring the .htaccess file of your website. To access the file, navigate to your root directory.

Before making changes, it’s strongly recommended to back up the old .htaccess file so that if anything goes wrong, you can restore your website easily.

9. Use Two-factor Authentication

Another great way to make your site more secure is two-factor authentication. This is a security method that acts as a temporary second password that updates every thirty seconds or so. Google Authenticator is a reliable tool for two-factor authentication.

Hackers will have to guess both your true password and temporary security code within the timeframe to access your site, which greatly increases your chance of blocking them. Using two-factor authentication is great since it can be used with various logins related to the websites that you manage.

10. Do a WordPress Security Audit

A WordPress security audit is key to discovering weak points and keeping the site safe from online attacks. This involves looking at how secure the WordPress website is at this point, including themes and plugins updates, access controls, and more. Checking helps determine weak spots to stop hackers from breaking in that could put your user information at risk.

11. Automatic Logout

If you often use public computers, there is a tendency for you to forget to log out of your account. This makes your account vulnerable because anyone can either see your data or make changes to your WordPress website. If you do not always trust yourself or your staff to remember to log out properly each time, consider enabling the WordPress auto-logout feature. 

To do this, you can use a plugin, such as Inactive Logout, that automatically logs users out when they have been inactive for a set period of time.

12. Utilize Trusted WordPress Themes

Nulled WordPress themes may seem cheap, but they have a lot of security problems. Most nulled themes are hacked versions of the original ones. Hackers can add harmful code, such as spam links and malware. Additionally, these themes can create backdoors for more attacks on your site. 

Secure your WordPress website by using themes from the official WP repository or from a trusted WordPress theme development company. Also, you can find many premium themes from reputable theme marketplaces.

13. Disable File Editing

By disabling file editing, you prevent users from editing plugin files and themes directly from the WP dashboard effectively. While most people who work on the backend of your website should understand the dangers of editing these important files, mistakes could happen. If mistakes occur, finding and fixing them can be a time-consuming task and may also be expensive.

14. Scan for Malware

It’s not always easy to spot security breaches. To make sure that no hackers slip through the cracks, you have to consistently and automatically scan for malware on your website. Regular scanning will instantly alert you if the worst should happen.

There are numerous malware scanning plugins that you can download to regularly monitor the security of your WordPress site. You can also install an all-in-one  WordPress security plugin that has this feature.

15. Downtime Monitoring

Breaches in security can lead to website downtime that can seriously damage your business and your profits if not resolved fast. However, you can’t check the status of your website constantly. This is where downtime monitoring is extremely helpful.

Website monitoring and all-in-one plugins have downtime monitoring tools that make keeping track of the current state of the website extremely simple. You will get instant alerts if something goes wrong. Moreover, you can check the detailed activity to determine exactly why, how, and when downtime occurred.

16. Install an SSL Certificate

SSL or Secure Sockets encrypts data exchanged between visitors and websites, boosting security against data theft. Websites with an SSL certificate use the HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP, which makes it easy to identify them. 

Your hosting provider can give you an SSL certificate since most of them include it in their plans or you can get your free SSL certificate for your WordPress website from Letsencrypt. 

Make sure to update it every year since the security certificate will last approximately one year.

17. Add Captcha to Forms

The login page is not the only form that you should focus on securing. There are other forms,such as checkout pages, blog comments, or any other open form on your website. These forms present opportunities for hackers to submit information on your WordPres site, such as malicious links in a comment.

While this may not directly affect the performance of your WordPress website, shady links create a confusing user experience and could even hurt your business. To prevent this kind of activity, install a WP plugin that prevents automated programs from posting malicious links or spam to your comments sections or other open forms on your website. 

18. Minimize Your Footprint

Another effective way of boosting your WordPress website’s security is to use as less plugins as possible. Instead of using an entirely different plugin for every feature, consider using a plugin that encompasses all those features into one.

Moreover, multi-functional plugins tend to have better support than those that fulfill only one function. 

Each separate theme or plugin installed on your WordPress website should be treated like another door that should be locked, and another possible entry for malicious attackers.

19. Log All User Activity

Keep track of all actions done on your website with plugins such as the WP Activity log. This information can be used to review changes regularly, particularly if your website is experiencing an attack or something unusual. Although it doesn’t mean that every file edit or password change is a sign of a hacker, if you have a lot of outside contributors with access to your site, keeping an eye on things is always a good idea.

20. Hide the WordPress Version

You can keep your website safe from potential hackers by concealing your WordPress version. This is because when you show the version number, it can provide hackers a clear path to the structure of your site. 

Although this may not be a catch-all approach, removing or hiding the version number makes it harder for hackers to figure out possible security flaws. Furthermore, it adds an extra layer of protection, even if it’s not perfect on its own.

21. Filter Out Special Characters in User Input Forms

SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks happen when hackers inject malicious code into the site using common user input forms. These forms include contact and payment forms. You can prevent this from happening by filtering out special characters in these forms.

Filtering out special characters blocks suspicious answers in text fields. This is particularly useful for websites that rely on user input fields that monitor conversions based on users signing up for consultations or mailing lists via these forms.

22. Choosing the Right Hosting Provider

Make sure to choose the right web hosting provider for your website. Keep in mind that not all hosting companies are the same in terms of security. That’s why it’s important to choose a reputable provider that offers great technical support and security features. 

Some things to consider when choosing a provider include:

• Secure data centers
• 24/7 support
• Regular data backups
• Free SSL certificates
• Built-in firewalls
• Security scans

Clean your Hacked Website

After taking care of so many things, still, your website gets attacked, don’t panic and follow the steps to recover from the damage:

1. Identify Hack

The first and foremost step is to identify the hack. For this, you will need to check few things to know the actual damage to the website:

1. Check the login access to your admin panel
2. Check the redirecting sites which direct from your website
3. Check any malware links on the website
4. Check Google status of security

It is advisable to change your password before and after the recovery.

2. Check With Your Hosting Company

Host providers can help you in this situation. Share your problem with the company, and they may analyze the problem thoroughly.

Many times, there may be a possibility that the damage has spread beyond the site because of the shared network. In that case, the host can help you solve the problem as they have a team of experts to solve this daily.

3. Restore From Backup

Regularly backing up your site is not enough. If you need to prevent hacking, restore your data regularly besides backup. This will lower the after-effect of hacking.

This proves to be a golden opportunity to beat the hacker. Hence it is an excellent practice to backup your site and restore it to a safer place timely.

4. Malware Scan and Removal

Most of the hackers upload their malware codes in the backdoor. Hence even after malware removal, these files remain hidden in the backdoor.

WordPress Security plugins scan the site thoroughly and detect the location of the harm. This way, it will clean your area thoroughly.

There are few things that you can do: Installing the plugins like WordFence or there are few commands that you can run on your server.

How to Scan for Malware with ClamAV on Server?

ClamAV (Clam AntiVirus) is a popular open-source antivirus engine used for detecting malware and viruses on Linux-based servers. Here’s a step-by-step guide to scanning for malware using ClamAV.

Step 1: The first step is to install and get the latest signature updates. To do this on various linux distributions, you can open a terminal and insert below command based on Operating System and press enter:

Debian / Ubuntu

• apt-get update
• apt-get install clamav

RHEL/CentOS

• yum install -y epel-release
• yum install -y clamav
• yum install -y clamd

macOS

• yum install -y clamav clamav-update

Fedora

• brew install clamav

Step 2: You may also build ClamAV from sources for better scanning performance. To update the signatures, you type “sudo freshclam” on a terminal session and press enter:

sudo freshclam

Step 3: Now we are ready to scan our system. To do this, you can use the “clamscan” command. This is a rich command that can work with many different parameters so you’d better insert “clamscan –-help” on the terminal first and see the various things that what you can do with it:

clamscan –-help

Step 4: Scan Files for Viruses with ClamAV
The general usage of clamscan is:

clamscan [options] [file/directory/-]

Step 5: To scan the “Downloads” folder located under the home directory, and choose to output only infected files and ring a bell when (and if) they are found. This translates to the following command on the terminal:

clamscan -r –bell -i /home/username/Downloads

Step 6: To scan the whole system (it may take a while) and remove all infected files in the process, you can use the command in the following form:

clamscan -r –remove /

Note: Sometimes, simply removing infected files can cause even more problems or breakages. You should always check the output first and then take manual action. Alternatively, you may also use the “move” command integrated as a parameter in the form of “–move=/home/bill/my_virus_collection” (example directory).”

5. Check User Permission

Assign your admin permission to trusted users only. Delete any inactive users that may be a source for any hacker.

Disable or restrict permission to your file directory. This can be done in the settings panel of your admin dashboard.

6. Change Passwords

Change every password and make it a unique one. Weak passwords are a welcoming point for hackers.

Check your password strength before confirming your password.

7. Strengthening of WordPress Website

Besides maintaining the above 18 remedies, strengthen your website well ahead. For that, keep in mind the following things:

1. Install firewall protection
2. Install a security plugin
3. Disable plugin and themes editing
4. Restrict admin permissions
5. Limit your login attempts

Final Thoughts

Every WordPress website owner should know how to secure their websites. Nevertheless, it’s not a one-time process. It requires continuous assessment since cyberattacks are ever-evolving. There will always be a risk, but you can always apply security measures and follow the best practices to keep your site safe and secure.

Also, keep in touch with us to avail WordPress security benefits and guidance from our WordPress experts.