What to do Immediately when your website is hacked?

 

Hackers are a part of internet and they keep trying to hack different websites.If someone has hacked your site then it would be necessary to know what to do in that case because your site can loose its rank and also the reputation.So you must know the methods to bring your site to the track again.

Inform Google about your Hacked Website

If someone has hacked your site then first of all inform Google about this hack.To do the same, visit Google Webmaster Tools.The Google webmaster central will inform you about the Malicious activity on your site.If it can harm others then Google will remove your site from the search result until you fix issues present in your website.

What to do Immediately when your website is hacked?

You should follow the below given tips:

#1- Change All kind of Passwords

First of all take your website down because it can affect other websites as well.Immediately inform your host about this hack because it can affect other sites on their server as well.
Immediately change all kinds of password associated to your Admin account like FTP account.Also keep a close look on your account because hackers can create new account to damage you.

#2 -Try to Know the strength and Nature of Attack

Before doing anything, it would be really important to know the strength or the nature of attack.To do the same, visit www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=yoursite.com and replace yoursite.com with your own website address.It will redirect you to Google Diagnostics page where you will get enough information about the malicious activity.
In your Google Webmaster Tools, check for any messages related to virus.To check pages affected by malware, navigate to Health>>Malware.I will suggest you to delete those pages.It will improve your protection level because attackers will have to create new malicious pages.
Now scan your computer and remove any kind of virus detected by your antivirus.Also have a look on the extension which appears in your browser.If anything is new or unseen then delete them.
In webmaster Tools, use the Fetch as Google option to detect pages affected by viruses.Once detected use the Link Removal Tool to hide these pages from users and search engines so that your can’t see unauthorized contents on your site.Check the below given video to understand “Fetch as Google” tool.
 

#3 – Remove the Hacked content or Get rid of Malicious contents

Once detected the malware pages or any other malicious content pages, you should try to remove the malicious content.If you are not able to handle virus or malware on your site then remove those contents.If you have already created backup then there is nothing wrong in deleting all of your content because later on, you would be able to restore the same.Once done,check Google safe browsing diagnostics and also the Malware page to check whether your website still has some malicious content or not.If any such content is still there then try to remove them.If you are using self hosted wordpress blog then update your plugins.If you are using any third party software then re install the same again.

#4 - Ask Google to review your site again once you removed all malicious contents

In above steps, I told you to take your website temporarily down and hide the contents from users and search engines.If you think that you have removed all kind of malicious contents then ask Google to review your site again.For doing the same, visit the Google Webmaster Tools and navigate to Health>>Malware>>Request a review. After that, Google will review your site again and remove any kind of warning which was shown earlier.In other words, your site is clean now so enjoy.However this method only removes the malware warning.You can be penalized,if hackers are spamming.To get rid of this, you will have to send a reconsideration request.

From the Editor’s Desk

These tips are quite helpful and you can use these tips to recover from the attack of hacker.These are quit normal steps and are easy to understand so even a naive user can use these methods.

What do you think?