How to recover a WordPress website after a malware attack?

If you own a WordPress website and want to recover it after a malware attack, then the following article is for you.

What is WordPress and who uses it?

WordPress is one of the most popular open-source CMS (content management system) platforms on the internet. It's found in over 74 million websites as their blogging engine and was downloaded more than 50 million times from wordpress.org. It's easy to install and is in use by 50 per cent of the top 10,000 websites including the U.S. White House, Forbes, Sony Music and even NASA.

According to our observations on cyberattacks that happened during 2013-2014 (including the viruses known as Tordal, Monkey Source and others), about 20% of all cyber attacks aimed at stealing money from users' bank accounts were performed using the WordPress platform.

Are there risks in using WordPress?

The risk of using WordPress is that it doesn't use native security concepts such as restricting access to sensitive information (database password) and requiring transactions with administrative privileges.

WordPress itself isn't a vulnerability, but the way people use WordPress is. Since there's no native access management and authentication system, users tend to create weak passwords and keep them unchanged for years – until their account gets hijacked by cybercriminals. This happened mostly because of using common passwords such as 'admin' or 'password' or even '123456'.

What you should do immediately to secure your website?

The first step to take when you realize that your WordPress website has been hacked is to immediately change your password. Go to the user area in your WordPress control panel and select "users" on the left side. Search for the current admin username (it should be named "admin") and click "edit" next to it.

Here you will see the "Old Password" field appearing. Do not type your old password in this box! Instead, make sure to write a new one (do not use common words or something that can be easily guessed) and click on the button saying "change password".

After doing this, install a WordPress security plugin that will help to prevent further malware attacks. Just install it, activate it and please refer to its settings page for more details. Since there are lots of similar plugins available on the market, you should choose one with good reviews from other users.

After setting up all these restrictive measures, think about how your WordPress website became infected. Please note that it might have been infected even before you installed the plugin. Assuming that this isn't true, the next step to take is to use a website malware scanner in order to figure out whether or not your website is safe.

If scanning shows that your website has malware/virus, then you should take the following steps:

1. Make sure to keep backups of all important files – especially database and be prepared for an emergency situation when you have to restore them from backup.

2. If you do not have a backup of your database at all – this is possible if you didn't use any third-party plugins – then there's no other choice but to restore your website from the backup and install all plugins again. Please note that this might not be possible if your website is too large (more than 10 Mb).

If you need assistance with WordPress malware removal – we can help. Just contact us for a free consultancy or additional information about our services

Conclusion

This article has provided you with some insight into the vulnerabilities of WordPress. And, if your website is attacked by malware or hackers, then this article will also give you some tips on how to recover a WordPress website after a malware attack. It's important that as an owner of a WordPress site, you are aware of these risks and take necessary precautions against them.

This could include using plugins like Wordfence which can detect any suspicious activity occurring on your blog. Ultimately, it’s up to each individual business owner whether they want to run the risk of their site being hacked for personal use or not.

If all else fails, contacting professionals who have experience in recovering websites from various attacks may be worth considering. Good luck!

Many people use WordPress as a platform because it's free, and easy to use. But, not many know the risks of using Wordpress CMS. What you should do if your website is hacked? Create a whole new password and back up your files and database!

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