How to Check if Your Website has Malware
When your site has been infected with Malware, there is a good chance that you have a weakness in your setup that has allowed a hacker to take over the site.
What Hackers Do
This individual may have gone so far as to add pages to your site. In more benign cases, the hacker adds content that spams users. In the more serious instances, this individual will attempt to get your site’s users to enter credit card and personal information as part of a phishing scam. Adding malware is one of the most serious attacks. Malware is added code that allows hackers to attack the computers of your website’s visitors.
Depending on your website platform, you may get a warning message flag on your webmaster tool page. Google may blacklist your page. Many a webmaster has found it helpful to use free – or paid – scanning services that run diagnostics for you. Being able to pinpoint the location of the malicious code is crucial to getting rid of it.
If you are running a sizable website and the presence of malware is crippling your online business, your best course of action is the help of a professional. While a computer-savvy entrepreneur can handle mild cases of smaller sites with few problems, a multi-page site with copious snippets of questionable code may be a bit above your pay grade. Do not let your business suffer by trying to do it alone.
You Found the Malware. Now What?
Take the website offline. Even if your site has not been blacklisted, you owe it to your site’s visitors to protect them against attacks. Scan your computer to eliminate any viruses. Next, update your site’s software. Since a hacker has gained access to your administrative tools, it is imperative that you now change all the passwords associated with your website and its organizational features. Remove the malware, and bring your site back online.
If the hacker’s coding is extensive or the malware is difficult to remove, check the last backup of your site for malware. When there is no evidence of an infection in the last backup, reload the site from the backup. Granted, you will lose some files that were created since you did this backup, but it saves you countless hours of pouring over code snippets. Again, if this is above your pay grade, hire a professional to do the job.
