When you see a “Red Screen of Death” appearing on your website, it means WordPress hacked signal. This can sometimes be dangerous because it means your website is infected for a longer period of time. It can destroy your privacy and reputation. WordPress websites are getting popular in almost every industry nowadays. They tend to handle everything from eCommerce transactions, marketing, and customer data management to many other services in between.
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A Few Parameters to Determine If Your WordPress is Hacked
WordPress Hacked notifications can destroy the future of your business. There are some crucial signs which provide signals that your website is more secure. The moment you get the notification, you need to start taking action immediately. Let’s dig into the details of these signs.
1. Google Browser Shows a Warning Sign
If your customer can see a message from Google Chrome with a warning message with an infectious code, it probably is. Customers can see this message when the website is blacklisted by Google Safe Browsing. Many popular browsers, such as Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera, display Google’s blacklist for showing warning messages to visitors.
2. When Your Hosting Company Disables Your Website
WordPress website hosting companies regularly scan their servers for malicious code. There are many reasons behind blocking your website by these hosting companies. Some of these reasons are:
Some malware code is visible on your server.
Sometimes Google, Spamhaus, or Norton Safe Web can blacklist your website domain name.
You can see there is high usage of CPU due to some malicious code running on your website.
Sometimes your server sends out phishing or spam emails
3. Outbound Ports like 443, 80, 587, and 465 for blocking your accounts
In some cases, the hosting companies can place some limitations on your website. HostGator, GoDaddy, and Big Rock have some automated systems to block all connections to the outbound ports like 443, 80, 587, and 465 for all accounts. Such kinds of security measures are put in place by companies to contain malware infections. Once companies quarantine the malicious files from the server, and the website passes through the virus scanner, you can place your request for unblocking.
4. Companies Place Complaints about the Hacking of their Credit Cards
Over the years, there has been an evolution of smart hacking procedures. They use malicious techniques to collect credit card information stored or entered on your site. Hackers sell these details on the internet. These details are further used to make fraudulent transactions of a variety of amounts.
You can experience such attacks that are targeted. These attacks are caused when there are some security vulnerabilities visible in your eCommerce store. When you are using a Content Management System (CMS), plugins like OpenCart, Magento, and PrestaShop can be installed and can contain some tough security flaws.
5. When Your Emails are Sent to the SPAM Folder
Hackers are known for using malware tools on hacked websites to send out spam emails to large numbers of people. Due to the malicious nature of these emails, servers all around the world might have a blacklisted IP address and the server. As a consequence, most of the time legitimate emails are sent to you in your spam folder. Every email in the spam folder is a loss of reputation and business.
6. Bizarre-looking JavaScript in Your Website Code
If you notice any weird-looking JavaScript code in the web page source, you need to address it as soon as possible. Otherwise, it can be used to steal credit card information, track passwords or some other sensitive information. Hackers can use this to redirect your visitors to other malicious sites, advertisements, or pop-ups. security researchers found pernicious jQuery code in a large number of hacked Magento stores. This small code snippet sends all credit card information to the malignant servers on the checkout section of the page.
Closing Thoughts
So, these are some of the primary parameters to understand that your website is hacked. There are many ways to protect your website from getting affected by hackers. To avoid this, you need to take some precautionary measures such as investing in automatic backups, hiding and protecting your admin pages and using an SSL tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1.Is WordPress easily hacked?
Ans 1.All websites on the internet are vulnerable to hacking attempts. The reason why WordPress sites are a common target is because WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder. It powers over 31% of all websites meaning hundreds of millions of websites across the globe.
Q2.How often are WordPress sites hacked?
Ans 2.According to statistics from 40,000+ WordPress Websites in Alexa Top 1 million, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacker attacks. Ever wondered why WordPress is such a popular target for malicious hackers?
Q3.Why is WordPress not secure?
Ans 3.WordPress is used by over 30% of websites on the internet today. While WordPress is a popular CMS, it’s also a popular target for hackers. Did you know that an estimated 30,000 websites are hacked every day and Google “blacklists” 10,000 sites per day, with WordPress representing over 80% of infected sites?