How to Detect and Remove Malware on Your Website

With years of experience supporting customers, MONA has seen many cases of website error notices, websites infected with malware, viruses, and ads being blocked from running. These are a main cause of serious damage to your website's performance. In this article, MONA Meida will help you find the cause and deal with a website infected with malware so your website can keep running and keep bringing results for your business.

What does it mean when a website is infected with malware?

Malware is code designed to harm computer systems, electronic devices or users. When malware is injected into a website, the site contains code designed to carry out harmful activities such as stealing personal information, destroying data and infecting visitors' computers with viruses when they visit the page.

Malware can get onto a website in several ways, including:

• Injection Attacks: Attacks such as SQL Injection or Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) can allow an attacker to inject malicious code into the website.
• File Uploads: When a website lets users upload files, attackers exploit this to “slip” files containing malware onto the site.
• Phishing: A website built to deceive users by imitating another website (such as a bank) in order to steal their login details.
• Backdoors: A security hole in a website can be used to install a backdoor (backdoor) that lets the attacker access and control the website remotely.

≫Read more: Top 5 malware scanning tools keep the website safe

What causes a website to be infected with malware?

There are many reasons why your website might be infected with malware. MONA lists the most common ones below:

• Insecure hosting or admin account: If your hosting is poorly secured, or your website's admin account (admin) has an easy-to-guess password, attackers can easily get in and inject malware into your website.
• Copying content and images from websites that contain malware: Those images or that content may also contain malware, and using them can infect your website too.
• Folder permissions: Specifically, folders on the server are not configured correctly for each person's access rights (anyone can log in), so an attacker can upload infected files to your server.
• Infected personal computers (trojan or virus): If the website administrator's computer is infected with a virus, login details can leak and attackers can log in to your website without permission.
• Bugs in open source software (Joomla, WordPress and so on) that have not been patched: If you use content management systems such as Joomla, WordPress and do not update to the latest versions, security holes can be exposed that make your website easy to attack.
• Files you upload to the website contain malware: If you or other users upload files containing malware, such as archives, scripts or unsafe applications, the website can become infected.

How does malware affect your website?

When a website contains malware, it is important for the administrator or owner to detect it in time and deal with it immediately. Leaving malware untreated can have serious consequences for your website and directly affect your users.

Accordingly, the specific consequences when a website is infected with malware can include:

• Loss of personal information of the website's users, which affects them and may also breach data protection rules.
• Damage to the website's credibility because customers generally do not trust a website infected with malware.
• Damage to users' computer systems is also one of the most serious consequences, because it can cause data loss or damage the computer's operating system.

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Signs that quickly show your website has been infected with malware

• Big loss of Traffic: When a website is injected with malware, traffic can suddenly drop for no clear reason. If that happens, your website may well be infected.
• A batch of pages dropped from the index: If several main pages of your website no longer appear in search results, or are simply removed from the search engine index, the site has probably been attacked and had malware added.
• Other links injected into the website: The hacker often insert strange links into your website to create fake backlinks. They may link to malicious websites, unreliable online stores or sites with inappropriate content.
• Spam on the website: If you see posts, comments or other unfamiliar content that you did not publish, this is also a sign of an attack.
• Notifications from Google Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools (now renamed Google Search Console) can notify you when it detects signs that your website has been attacked, including malware.

Solutions to prevent a website from being infected with malware

Prevention is better than cure. To keep your website from being infected with malware, MONA has put together these solutions to help you protect your website as well as possible:

Temporary solutions when a website is infected with malware

• Check your local computer: The first thing to do when your website is infected is to make sure your own computer has no virus or malicious software. MONA provides a safe hosting environment, but you also need to protect your personal computer to stop malware spreading.
• Change your passwords: Your password is the key to your website's security. We recommend using strong passwords and changing them regularly to protect important information.
• Assess the damage: In the worst case, if your website is attacked, MONA will help you assess and fix the damage quickly and effectively.
• Restore a backup and scan for malware: Do not worry about losing data, because we provide safe website data backup solutions that protect against malware.
• Update applications, add-ons, plugins and themes: With MONA you receive notifications and support to update applications and add-ons automatically and simply, which protects your website from new threats.
• Remove your site from blacklists: If your website is infected with malware, you need to check and remove it from blacklists so that the site can work normally again.

Long-term solutions

There are many reasons a website ends up with malware, from security weaknesses on the server to gaps in how the site is managed. To keep your website safe, you can use the short-term solutions listed above.

However, for stronger, long-lasting and sustainable protection, you can consider moving from your current hosting provider to a more reputable, higher-quality one.

MONA Host is one of the leading providers of high-quality hosting and infrastructure solutions in the market. We have many years of experience keeping customers' websites safe and running reliably on the internet.

Co-Founder, MONA Host: “Even as we expand and grow, our top priority is still to make sure our customers are as satisfied as possible and get what they need and want. For us, customer goodwill and satisfaction matter most.”

In particular, when you use MONA hosting you receive these benefits below:

• FREE WEBSITE BUG-SCAN PLAN – A healthy website, so you can do business with peace of mind.
• 24/7 CUSTOMER SUPPORT – For any infrastructure issue, early morning or late at night, MONA is ready to support you 24/7.
• LARGE RESOURCES, NO LIMITS – Enough resources for more than 10,000 users visiting your website at the same time, and ready to scale the configuration at any time.
• PART OF THE MONA.HOST ECOSYSTEM: Full infrastructure solutions so you can grow your business across the board.

Contact us now at Hotline 1900 636 648 to get advice on the infrastructure solution that best fits your business.

How to fix a website infected with malware

Step 1: Find the source of the malware infection

There are usually 5 ways to check where your website's malware came from. Let's go through them in detail:

Method 1: Check your personal computer

If your personal computer has a virus, or your access details were stolen and used to upload malware with harmful content, you need to download an antivirus program and scan your personal computer to make sure it is safe before taking the next steps.

Method 2: Check the website's source code with Google Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools is a powerful tool for website administrators. It is provided free to help you manage links to your website and the keywords users use to find it. The tool also checks your website regularly and notifies you as soon as it detects malware.

The process of checking the website's source code includes:

• Go to the Webmaster Tools address and sign in to your account.
• Verify your website with Google.
• Complete all of Google's instructions to verify the account.
• Choose “security issues” and check for errors.

Method 3: Use online tools

Besides Google Webmaster Tools, there are many reputable websites that scan for and quickly detect malware, for example:

• Sucuri: Besides detecting malware on a website, it also offers services that protect the site against attacks. It is one of the popular tools that many people use to check their website security.
• SiteLock: This tool offers a malware scanning service that helps identify and remove malware that may be on your website. It also provides different security solutions depending on the needs of each website.
• Qualys: A well-known cybersecurity company that provides services to scan for and detect security vulnerabilities on websites. Its service not only detects malware but also helps improve the overall security of your system.
• Comodo cWatch: A provider of complete security solutions for websites, including malware scanning and detection. It offers a range of tools and services to keep your website safe.
• Norton Safe Web: Symantec's Norton Safe Web offers a free tool to check how safe a website is. Besides detecting the cause of a malware infection, it also assesses the risk of malware, phishing and other threats.

Method 4: Use plugins available on WordPress to check

If your website runs on WordPress, you can also use a few of the plugins below to check quickly when it is infected:

• 6Scan Security: 6Scan Security offers automatic scanning tools to detect and remove malware, security vulnerabilities and other threats on your website. It also provides an easy-to-use interface for managing and handling security problems quickly.
• Wordfence Security: If you use WordPress, Wordfence is a popular plugin that helps protect your website from attacks. It also scans for malware and provides updates to protect against new threats.

Method 5: Check manually

Once you have used the steps above to check whether your website is infected, and if the applications you use help remove malware, you should also check by hand.

First, check the files that were changed most recently since you found your website was infected. Files such as index., header, footer, default., and .htaccess are usually where malware can be attached, especially pieces of code base64.

You can also download your website's source code and scan it with antivirus software. Be careful, though, because this software may also delete your important files if it detects that they are infected.

Step 2: Uninstall applications of unknown origin

Once you have confirmed the website contains malware, log in to your hosting control panel. You normally receive the login details when you buy the hosting service.

Find the section “Installed applications” or “Installed apps” in the control panel. These applications are usually WordPress, Joomla, Drupal,… View the list of applications installed on your website. Check any applications you do not remember installing or do not recognize. Identify the applications of unknown origin and choose the option to remove or delete them from your website.

There is usually an option to remove them directly from the hosting control panel. After removing them, check the list of applications again to make sure only the ones you trust and remember installing are left.

Step 3: Restore the most recent data backup

In your hosting control panel, find the section “Backup” or “Backup and Restore“. View the list of available backups and choose the most recent one from before your website was infected. Choose the “Restore” option and follow the instructions to restore your website from the selected backup. Wait for the restore to finish. Then check the website again to make sure everything works normally.

Step 4: Change the admin credentials

After restoring the backup, log in to your website's admin area. Find the Account management or User accounts section in the admin area. Change the username (Username) and password (Password) to new, strong ones to protect your account from further attacks.

Step 5: Optimize the source code

Finally, once the security issues are dealt with, you need to optimize the source code to improve the performance and security of the website. You can remove unnecessary code, fix errors and improve the code structure. This not only speeds up page loading but also reduces the risk of attacks through hidden security holes in the code.

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That is all the information on how to detect and deal with a website infected with malware that MONA Media has just shared with you. We hope this article helps you fix an infected website quickly and correctly. Keep in mind that viruses, malware and other malicious software can seriously harm not only your website but also your users. Rather than waiting for a problem and then looking for a fix, protect your website in advance against the threats around it.

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