It is always a matter of concern to come to know that our WordPress site is being hacked. But, how do we come to know that our site is hacked? Actually, there is no specific indication that shows your site is hacked. However, there are some signs that are helpful in making you understand that your website is hacked or not. This article post is going to cover those signs that let you know about your hacked WordPress site.
Reduced Website Traffic
Go through the website traffic report generated by Google analytics and it shows reduced web traffic, then this is a sign that shows your WordPress website is under threat. To hijack a website, there is much malware available. This malware redirects the traffic to your website to spammy websites. Even sometimes, the logged in users are not redirected and they are left unnoticed for some time. The safe browsing tool of Google can be another reason that contributes to the decrease in your website traffic. It gives warning to your website users regarding your WordPress website.
Inserted bad links on your website
Addition of wrong data on your website is an indication of your site being hacked. Formation of a backdoor on your site is easy for the hackers and it’s the entry point for them to begin accessing your website database and make modifications to it. They may add spammy links to your site that lead the user to false websites. Usually, these spammy links are present in the footer section. However, they could be present on a website. Though you delete them, that doesn’t mean they won’t come back in future. The solution involves the detection of this backdoor on this website and fixes it.
Disfigured homepage of your site
A disfigured homepage is the clear indication of your hacked WordPress website. However, there are many hacking attempts that do not play with your homepage as they do not want to come into the picture as soon as possible. But, some other hackers completely disfigure your website homepage so as to declare that they have hacked the website. In such cases, you can see the message of the hackers displayed on the homepage. They may even extract money from the owner of the hacked website.
Failed WordPress Login Attempt
In case, you are not able to successfully login to your WordPress account, then it could be due to the removal of your admin account from WordPress. Now, since your account is deleted, you won’t be able to reset the login credentials from the login page. However, you can add your admin account by other means such as FTP or phpMyAdmin. Still, your website will not be safe until the time you are able to find out how your website got hacked.
Dubious user accounts registered on WordPress
If your WordPress website allows multiple user registrations and does not have any protection against spam registration, then dubious user accounts will be common on your website. In case, your website notices new user accounts and you are not aware of allowing user registration on your site, then possibly your website is hacked. Generally, the spam user holds the administrator’s role and also, you may not be able to delete that user from the admin area of your website.
Presence of insignificant files on your server
There are many plugins that tell you about the presence of insignificant files/ script on your server. Generally, the unknown files are present in the wp-content folder. The hackers save them with names of WordPress files so that they cannot be identified easily. Even if you delete those files, there is no guarantee that they won’t return to your website.
Slow loading and Unresponsive website
It may happen that the different websites may randomly get the denial of some services. It may be caused due to the hacked computers and servers that use fake IP addresses. They may make plenty of requests to your server and take attempts to hack your WordPress website. Such activities and attempts make your website slow, and unresponsive. To solve this problem, you should go through your server logs and identify those IP addresses that are making plenty of requests. Simply block them.
Fraudulent activities in Server Logs
Server files are the automatically generated plain text files that are kept within your web server. Your server goes through a lot of errors and the record of all these errors are maintained by these files. From the cPanel dashboard of your website, you can access the server log files. When your WordPress website is under threat, these files will let you know what is happening on your website. Also, they keep the different IP addresses that are used to access your website well stored. Thus, you are allowed to block the dubious IP addresses.
Dubious Scheduled Tasks
Users are allowed to set up cron activities. The cron activities are the scheduled tasks such as that could include scheduling future posts, removing comments from WordPress trash, etc. A hacking attempt can completely destroy the cron and make the scheduled tasks run on your server without making you aware of it.
Wrong Search results
If the search results are showing your website’s wrong title and meta description, take it as a sign that your WordPress site is hacked. While looking at your website, you are able to see the correct title and meta description of your site. The hacker has made a backdoor to enter into your website and insert harmful codes in it. These codes modify the data on your website such that only the search engines can see the information.
Pop up ads on your WordPress website
There are pop-up ads that hack the traffic of your website by displaying the spam advertisements of illegal sites. Such pop-up ads are not meant for the registered users of a website or those who are directly accessing a website. These advertisements are only displayed for those users who visit the website from search engines.
How to fix the hacked WordPress website?
It can be a tough task to clean up a hacked WordPress site. Therefore, we recommend you to ask the experts to clean your hacked WordPress website. There are many plugins available to protect the websites from hacking. These plugins are responsible to clean up your website whenever it gets hacked. The plugins come with 24×7 website monitoring and also, website application firewall. If you want to trust a reliable source for premium WordPress themes, try VWTHemes. Our themes are clean and are strong enough to build professional websites.
