Website Hacking and Issues Therein
It is not unusual for websites to be hacked. Websites are often vulnerable to hacking, and resolving such problems requires taking a number of actions. The website is owned by one person, one business, or many people. Well-known websites are constantly vulnerable to hacking attempts. People and businesses have been talking about it a lot lately. The frequency of website hacking cybercrime is not rising over time.
There were one billion webpages on the internet as of 2014. Due to websites being dormant, it is now hovering at 944 million, and sometime in 2015, it is predicted to return to normal around 1 billion. Let’s pause for a moment to digest that figure: one billion.
Another startling fact is that, via its Safe Browsing feature, one of the most widely used search engines in the world, Google, quarantines almost 10,000 websites per day. Our study indicates that between 2 and 5% of the millions of websites that pass through our scanning technology contain some kind of Indicator of Compromise (IoC) that indicates a website assault. Although this may seem a little excessive given that the websites being scanned are often thought to be experiencing problems, we would extend that to mean that around 1% of all websites on the internet are compromised or infected just to be cautious. To put that into perspective, there are already something in the region of 9 million compromised or infected websites.
It seems sense that people would want to know how websites keep being hacked with an effect like this. The problem is that the response hasn’t changed in a while.
What should you do if a hacker targets your website?
The First Actions You Need To Do
Analyzing the hacking of your website is also essential in order to identify any weak points in the coding and fix them as soon as feasible. It’s important to keep in mind that after hackers get access to your website, they often choose to store up methods for future hacking attempts at your online resource. Such routes are only visible to experts.
Thus, the following are detailed instructions on what to do if your website has been compromised:
Virus-check your home computer. It’s not essential to go to the store and get a paid antivirus. We advise making use of Comodo and Antivira.
Set up FireWall on your own computer. Using FireWall dramatically lowers the possibility that malware may infiltrate your computer. We would suggest using Zone Alarm, a fantastic but paid substitute, or Comodo, which is one of the greatest FireWalls and is free.
Speak with your hosting company. It’s possible that more than just your website has been compromised, particularly if you utilize regular hosting rather than renting a server. Inform the administration, and request that they investigate the hacking.
Change all of the passwords, including those for mail boxes, FTP accounts, and passwords.
Inform users that your website has been compromised and advise them to reset their passwords.
Make a quick backup of every file on your server.
Examine the.htaccess file’s code. This file may be used by a hacker to direct users from your online resource to a website that has harmful code installed.
It may be essential to remove every file from your server, so be ready for that possibility. It can be essential to remove every file and database from your server since the installed code might be so well-hidden.
Update to the most recent version of your CMS.
In conclusion, it is simpler to stop website hacking than to rebuild the website from the ground up. Protecting your website is a major duty that should only be handled by professionals. While it is not a good idea to leave website development to an amateur, it is also not a good idea to ignore security.
Hacking
There are two categories of companies: the first category was compromised by hackers, while the second category remains secure. It is imperative that secure companies take steps to fortify themselves and eliminate hacking vulnerabilities. Numerous individuals, software, and viruses have the ability to compromise websites and cause harm to both users and content. Hacking is a prevalent issue, however webmasters need to be proficient in eliminating these issues and shielding their users from danger.
Learn About
Have you ever pondered about how would you find out if your website is not yours now? How will you come to know if someone has hacked your website or blog? It is a regular issue that is addressed when individuals become webmasters, and their website is prone to be hacked. There are several forms of signs that alert the webmasters that a hacker has hacked you. The first indicator is that when you view your website and your interface has been modified. Your website does not look like the one you created, and you have no control over it. Some of the hackers deface the website and give a message to the webmasters to know that a particular hacker is hacking them. These are the ways that the hacker enjoys and tells the world proudly I hacked it. Sometimes the webmasters do not get to know that they are being chased, and someone is using their website as well. They do not get any signal about the hacking when the hacker has hacked the site.
Indications
Here are some of the indications and signs that will help the owner of the website know that someone has hacked them, and he has got no control over his property.
You got to see a defaced website.
The redirection of the website will lead you to a porn site or some other unsavory website.
The search engine like Google and Bing will let you know about the hacking.
The search browsers and engines will give you the indications about website hacking.
You will find more traffic on your website from other countries that you have not focused yet.
You will feel strange activities on your website.
How the websites get hacked?
Without the use of some safety measures, hackers hack the websites usually. The webmasters are unaware of the reasons that how someone hacked their property when they have put safety measures as well. The hackers have many ways in which they can get the control of the website, and some of the ways are:
The hacker easily guesses the password of your website.
The malware will be introduced in your PC to get the login details.
Using outdated software other than siteguarding.com
Hacking some other website that has shared-server with you.
What to do?
When the hacker controls your website, you have the responsibility to take some serious steps. Your website is your property; you cannot lose control over it. The hacker can use your business and information for negative purposes creating problems for you. Follow some of the steps given here when your website is subject to hacking:
Tell the World
When the hacker hacks your website, you must tell the world. Other platforms must spread the awareness about the incident. It will help the users to understand the conditions and situations you are facing. It will help the users from facing any problems in the meantime.
Contacting the Host The webmaster must eventually contact the host that can restore website. The server hosts the ability to regain the control over the website you have owned.
It will come back to normal.
Remove the redirection to some unsavory website.
Damage must be Reverted
Asking for help to regain the website will undo the damage done by the hacker. The people who were aware of your problems can help you get your website back. This step is very important as getting help from someone is essential at particular times.
Changing the Passwords
When you get to know that someone hacked the website, change the passwords. Sometimes changing the passwords let you regain the control. Do not ever set easy passwords. Setting the passwords is a technique. So the webmasters must keep changing the passwords or rotate them.
Create a Backup
The webmaster must keep the backup of his website. Sometimes, the websites have chances to get hacked because of the popularity or some growing issues. So the backup must be there in case if something happens, you must have your data to upload it again.
Website Security
The websites must always be secured. Some of the companies offer their services to set a safe and secure solution for the websites. The websites like siteguarding.com are helpful in such cases when the webmasters want to set security on their websites. The website will offer;
Antivirus
Monitoring the Change
Firewall
Find Solutions
The webmasters must look for better solutions to secure their website. They must look for services that guarantee them the proper security. Siteguarding.com is the website that has solutions to your problems.
5 Easy Steps to Secure Your Website from Hackers
You may have worried when starting this post that it would be full of technical jargon that your average website owner would find baffling. Some of our tips further down do get technical, and you may want to bring in your developer for those.
But there are a few things you can do on your own first that don’t involve that much technical know-how.
Step #1: Install security plugins.
If you built your website with a content management system (CMS), you can enhance your website with security plugins that actively prevent website hacking attempts. Each of the main CMS options have security plugins available, many of them for free.
Security plugins for WordPress:
- iThemes Security
- Bulletproof Security
- Sucuri
- Wordfence
- fail2Ban
- Security options for Magento:
- Amasty
- Watchlog Pro
- MageFence
- Security extensions for Joomla:
- JHackGuard
- jomDefender
- RSFirewall
- Antivirus Website Protection
These options address the security vulnerabilities that are inherent in each platform, foiling additional types of hacking attempts that could threaten your website.
In addition, all websites – whether you’re running a CMS-managed site or HTML pages – can benefit from considering SiteLock. SiteLock goes above and beyond simply closing site security loopholes by providing daily monitoring for everything from malware detection to vulnerability identification to active virus scanning and more. If your business relies on its website, SiteLock is definitely an investment worth considering.
Step #2: Use HTTPS
As a consumer, you may already know to always look for the green lock image and https in your browser bar any time you provide sensitive information to a website. Those five little letters are an important shorthand for hacker security: they signal that it’s safe to provide financial information on that particular webpage.
An SSL certificate is important because it secures the transfer of information – such as credit cards, personal data, and contact information – between your website and the server.
While an SSL certificate has always been essential for eCommerce websites, having one has recently become important for all websites. Google released a Chrome update in 2018. The security update happened in July and alerts website visitors if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate installed. That makes visitors more likely to bounce, even if your website doesn’t collect sensitive information.
Search engines are taking website security more seriously than ever because they want users to have a positive and safe experience browsing the web. Taking the commitment to security further, a search engine may rank your website lower in search results if you don’t have an SSL certificate.
What does that mean for you? If you want people to trust your brand, you need to invest in an SSL certificate. The cost of an SSL certificate is minimal, but the extra level of encryption it offers to your customers goes a long way to making your website more secure and trustworthy.
At HostGator, we also take website security seriously, but most importantly, we want to make it easy for you to be secure. All HostGator web hosting packages come with a free SSL certificate. The SSL certificate will be automatically applied to your account, but you do need to take a few steps to install the free SSL certificate on your website.
Step #3: Keep your website platform and software up-to-date
Using a CMS with various useful plugins and extensions offers a lot of benefits, but it also brings risk. The leading cause of website infections is vulnerabilities in a content management system’s extensible components.
Because many of these tools are created as open-source software programs, their code is easily accessible – to both good-intentioned developers as well as malicious hackers. Hackers can pore over this code, looking for security vulnerabilities that allow them to take control of your website by exploiting any platform or script weaknesses.
To protect your website from being hacked, always make sure your content management system, plugins, apps, and any scripts you’ve installed are up-to-date.
If you’re running a website built on WordPress, you can check whether you’re up to date quickly when logging into your WordPress dashboard. Look for the update icon in the top left corner next to your site name. Click the number to access your WordPress Updates.
Step #4: Make sure your passwords are secure
This one seems simple, but it’s so important.
It’s tempting to go with a password you know will always be easy for you to remember. That’s why the #1 most common password is still 123456. You have to do better than that – a lot better than that to prevent login attempts from hackers and other outsiders.
Make the effort to figure out a truly secure password (or use HostGator’s password generator). Make it long. Use a mix of special characters, numbers, and letters. And steer clear of potentially easy-to-guess keywords like your birthday or kid’s name. If a hacker somehow gains access to other information about you, they’ll know to guess those first.
Holding yourself to a high standard for password security is step one. You also need to make sure everyone who has access to your website has similarly strong passwords. One weak password within your team can make your website susceptible to a data leak, so set expectations with everyone who has access.
Institute requirements for all website users in terms of length and types of characters. If your employees want to use easy passwords for their less secure accounts, that’s their business. But when it comes to your website, it’s your business (literally) and you can hold them to a higher standard.
Step #5: Invest in automatic backups.
Even if you do everything else on this list, you still face some risk. The worst-case scenario of a website hack is to lose everything because you forgot to back your website up. The best way to protect yourself is to make sure you always have a recent backup.
While a data breach will be stressful no matter what, when you have a current backup, recovering is much easier. You can make a habit out of manually backing your website up daily or weekly. But if there’s even the slightest chance you’ll forget, invest in automatic backups. It’s a cheap way to buy peace of mind.