Is your website behaving in a strange manner? If so, are you seeing a lot of spam or harmful ads? Is Google preventing people from accessing your site? If you answered yes to any of them, then your website has most likely been compromised.

Always keep in mind that hackers may do a lot of harm to your website if it is attacked. Furthermore, these hackers infect your website with malicious code, causing it to malfunction.

When your website gets attacked, spam adverts are shown and your users are sent to hazardous websites, which slows down your site. You’ll also be banned from the main search engines if your web provider suspends your site and blacklists it.

Having your website hacked may have a negative impact on your internet reputation. As a result, knowing the telltale indicators of a hacked website is essential. But first, let’s take a closer look at how website hacks work.

What is a Website Hack?

There are several ways a website might be breached. FTP access to your site management account is the most common cause of this problem. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a computer-to-machine protocol that allows computers to interact with one another.

Most often, computers utilize it to receive and transfer data. Code is added to your website when a hacker gains access to your account. The code on your website might do everything from showing obscene remarks to promoting the goods of your competitors.

Adding insult to injury, the code may potentially infect your users’ machines with viruses. As you can see, a hacked website may have a negative impact on your internet reputation. With this in mind, here are some of the symptoms that your website may be under attack:

When someone visits your site, browsers display a warning.

Your site is under assault if your visitors get a warning notice while visiting it from a browser. If your website’s visitors or users receive this warning, Google has banned it. It’s worth noting that major browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Opera use Google’s blacklist system to display warnings.

According to what Google detects on your page, these warning messages might be different. For the majority of the time, if someone attempts to visit your website, they will see an error page stating, “The site ahead contains malware.”

Your website is deactivated by the hosting company

Web hosting companies monitor their servers for harmful code on a regular basis, so keep this in mind at all times. To prevent the spread of viruses, they normally take down compromised websites. It’s typical for your web host to take these measures to stop you from using their service.

• Your server is infected with malware.
• spam or phishing emails are being sent from your website’s server on a regular basis.
• It seems that Google has blacklisted your website’s domain name.
• Because of malicious malware, your website’s server is using a lot of CPU power.

You are locked out of your admin account

When you have access to the admin panel, you have total control over your website. As a result, after your website has been breached, your admin panel will be locked down. One of the most obvious indicators of a hacked website is the inability to enter the admin panel.

Hackers may alter your login credentials after they’ve gained access to your admin account. They would also modify your phone number so that you would no longer get notifications.

This also suggests that something is wrong with your password. In order to prevent receiving the mail with the reset link, you must request a reset. Hackers, on the other hand, may create a new administrator account. As a result, even if you can log in, you’ll have restricted functionality and your admin account will be changed. This would remove the capabilities that came with the previous admin account.

Presence of unusual JavaScript in your website code 

The existence of cryptic JavaScript in the website’s code signals that your site is under assault. If you want to be sure there are no problems, you need to remove the code as quickly as possible. Malicious JavaScript is often used to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers and passwords.

JavaScript is used by hackers to trick people into visiting dangerous websites. JavaScript is also to blame for the appearance of pop-ups and other forms of spam advertising. The presence of malicious JQuery code on your website is a sure indicator that someone has tried to compromise your site.

On the transaction page, the JQuery code is also in charge of transferring credit card information to malicious sites. Your online store’s popularity will suffer as a result if this occurs. The best method to keep malware at bay is to conduct frequent security audits.

Unusual data found in analytics

The analytics of your website is accessible to you as the website’s owner. For example, you can instantly see how many people have visited your site in the previous week. It’s possible that your website is under assault if the data you view seems out of the ordinary.

Your website may have been hacked if the quantity of individuals exiting your site is excessive. In the event that cyber-attackers are diverting visitors from other websites to yours, you should be aware of the sudden surge in traffic.

But don’t assume that they are doing this for your benefit at any time. Your website has most likely been compromised, and as a result, individuals who visit it are being scammed. In addition, hackers may reroute users by modifying the website’s internal connections to external ones.

A frequent tactic used by criminals is to clone your website and take false payments. However, apart from hacking, a broad number of other factors might cause analytics data to shift. Analytical data should only be examined with extreme caution.

Sudden change in website content

The content of a website may be altered by hackers for a variety of reasons. After changing links, it is common for them to change the whole content of your site. Furthermore, there is a risk that the material may be defaced or altered in a way that is difficult to detect.

Your website’s popularity will be adversely impacted by this change in content. Keeping an eye on the list of pages on your website is an excellent method to stay on top of content updates. The information should be carefully analysed if they show alterations that you believe are not yours.

Take prompt action to safeguard the website if any changes are made to the material without your awareness. Negative content about your company might hurt your website’s popularity.

When your website is breached, what should you do?

In fact, there is no definitive list that indicates that your website is under assault. Hackers are increasingly focusing on more complex methods of conducting cyber-attacks as a result of the expansion of technological platforms. Here are the measures you should take if you discover that your website has been hacked.

Investigate Thoroughly 

If your website takes a long time to load or crashes, it doesn’t mean it’s under assault. To put it simply, you must discover the root cause of the problem. In certain cases, new plugins have caused websites to become sluggish and unresponsive. You wouldn’t gain anything by drawing judgments hastily. If you want to support, get it from a qualified specialist.

Eliminate Faulty Codes 

Cyber-attacks might be made easier if your code is faulty or sluggish. It’s important that you examine the code carefully. To make your site more responsive, you should remove any unapproved plugins. Your website’s software platforms need to be updated.

Secure your Website with a Firewall 

A firewall is one of the greatest solutions to protect your website. Any future hacks might be prevented by installing a firewall. It is possible to prevent dangerous bots from accessing your website using a web application firewall.

Importance of a Good Web Host 

No mistake about it, implementing your own security measures is critical. It’s also possible to keep your site secure if you have a decent web hosting service. SSL certificates and virus-detection programs are a few of the most common ones. Hostnats offers free SSL certificates and anti-malware and anti-virus protection for all of its web hosting Services. Thus, your website and its contents are kept protected.

Remove Google Blacklist 

To get your website off the blacklist, you need to let Google know that it is clean. However, keep in mind that Google will do a thorough scan of your site to ensure that it is free of malware. You should also advise your hosting provider that your site has been cleansed. In order to remove the suspension, they would conduct a site inspection and make sure everything was clean.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that dealing with a hacked website is a real pain. Also, dealing with a website that has been infected is time-consuming and has a negative impact on your company’s reputation. As a result, it’s imperative that you take the necessary precautions.

• Make sure the plugins you use are safe and well-known.
• Select a safe web hosting service.
• Conduct security audits on your website.
• Keep an eye on the aforementioned parameters for any changes.