Want to know if Your WordPress site has been hacked? Here are 7 signs it has!
If you’re asking yourself “Has my WordPress site been hacked?” you’ll want some quick answers. I’ll cover the 7 top signs your sight HAS been hacked and what steps to take to clean it up.
The faster you notice the signs of a website breach, the quicker you can get your site cleaned up. The quicker you can get your website cleaned, the less damage the hack can do to your website.
I can’t stress the importance of a solid WordPress backup and WordPress security solution you should have on your site. I highly recommend installing and activating a WordPress security plugin and WordPress backup plugin as soon as possible.
Not all hackers have the same goal, so the signs of a website compromise will depend on the hackers motive. Here are 7 different symptoms you need to look out for when you are monitoring the health of your site.
- Your Home Page is Different – Some hackers main goal is notoriety. So basically they mess up your home page and leave some obnoxious message that “hey – you’re and idiot and we hacked your site”.
- Your Website Performance has Dropped – if your site has been infected with malware it can slow down your site. If your site is under brute force attack, it will slow it down as well.
- Your Site Contains Malicious or Spam Popup Ads – If all of a sudden you see ads all over your site that YOU did not put there – YES, you’ve been hacked. The goal of this type of attack is to drive traffic away from your site to the hackers sites.
- Your Site has a Decrease in Traffic and Your Bounce Rate is WAY Up – a sudden drop in traffic deserves an investigation. There could be a malicious script on your site that is redirecting users away from your site or Google could already be blacklisting your website as a malicious site.
- Unexpected File Changes – if files on your website have been changed, added or removed, it can be a sign your website has been hacked. Having a notification system in place can alert you of a website file change right away.
- Unexpected New Admin Users – If your site has been hacked it’s possible for the hacker to create a new admin user. With their new admin status they can cause some major damage to your website.
- Admin Users Removed – if you are unable to login to your WordPress site, it may be a serious sign of infection. Some hackers immediately delete all admin users to completely control access to a website.
Moral of this story – keep your website backed up on the cloud and have a Pro security plugin installed and configured correctly.
Looking for help securing your WordPress website? Check out our affordable WordPress maintenance plans here.
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