What to do when you get hacked?

byD

296 followers

Updated 12 years ago

Hello.

I have a website that has just been hacked. I saw a post in the forum from summer 2012 about hacking. Are there any other suggestions about what to do when you are hacked? This is going to become an on-going blog post that will share my experience with other WA members about what to do when your site gets hacked. So at the beginning it will be thin on content and will be fleshed out as I share what is happening with the site. The image that accompanies this post is a screenshot from my hacked site.

Thanks for the idea of hiring somebody on Fiverr. Sounds like a great idea!

Here is some other advice I've received so far.

1- Delete the entire site
2- Clear the database
3- Restore from the last know good backup
4- Don't repair the site (it's tedious and not guaranteed of clearing the virus / hack)
5- Have a strong password, at least 12 characters long with good mix of upper and lower case, numerics and symbols
6- Keep WordPress updated to the latest version
7- Use a theme produced by pros
8- Use only reputable plug-ins and keep them to a minimum
9- Keep reliable backups and store them off-server (for example with Amazon S3)
10- Use a log-in limits plugin

I did find somebody on Fiverr for only $5 to restore the site.

At first glance the site appears to be up again. However, on further note it has still been hacked. All of the tabs on the top except for one are linked to an outside spammy page rather than being linked to internal pages.

On a further note, despite changing my Wordpress password for log-in, I cannot enter my Wordpress platform to edit the site.

Any further suggestions?