How To Know If a Website Has Been Hacked or Not
June 2nd, 2018 | by Ravi Chahar || 11 Comments |
Are you afraid that your website has been hacked by someone? Is my WordPress website hacked? How to know if my website has been hacked or not?
These types of questions strike your mind when you handle a WordPress and don’t have the proper security. It’s always recommended to improve the security of your WordPress website.
Is there any sign to show the hack? Well, I am going to tell you some indications, with which you can come to know about a website hack.
You should know the signs, so that if something similar happens to you then you can take the required action to save your website.
How To Know If My Website Has Been Hacked
While running a WordPress website, you should take care of many important things. WordPress security should always be the first priority for you. What would you do if someone hacks your website? People ask how would I know that my WordPress website hacked?
In this article, I am going to show you the list of signs which can be seen on a hacked website.
#1. Not able to sign in to your admin panel
When you are not able to login to your WordPress admin panel or the page keeps refreshing then it is possible that your website has been hacked. It is possible that the hackers have added a script in your .htaccess file and you are not welcomed.
You shouldn’t provide your WordPress username and the password to anyone. make sure that you keep changing your password on the regular interval of time.
#2. Are you getting more emails
When any hacker hacks your website and sends many spam emails to many people in your circle or others then they will spam your emails. You will get more emails than usual and you won’t be able to access your email on your webs hosting anymore. So it’s better to keep changing the password of your email.
#3. The Home Page has been changed
When you enter the URL of your website in the browser and you don’t see the home page of your website then your website has been hacked. It’s because the hackers have added some script or any malware which is running on your website. You may have noticed the pages with unknown languages running when you get a virus in your computer. It’s similar to that.
#4. You see unknown content
If you see any piece of content which hasn’t written by you then it is possible that your website has been hacked. There are chances that the hackers have added some bad content on your website to damage its ranking.
#5. Your website speed reduces dramatically
You open your website in the morning and find that its page loading time is quite good. But after some time when you open it again then you are not even able to open it. You may think that it would happen because of the web hosting server. But sometimes it may happen due to the injection of any code or the brute force attack.
#6. The bandwidth has risen
While doing something with the cPanel of your web hosting, you find that the bandwidth has risen a lot. The website data is of 100MB and the bandwidth has increased to 500MB then it is possible that your website has been hacked. You should talk to your web hosting support during such situations to make it clear.
#7. The traffic surges dow
Is my WordPress website hacked? The answer of this question lies in the fact that if you have noticed that the traffic of your website has fluctuated a lot within one day then you should check the possibility of the hack. If may occur that the pages of your website have been blocked by the search engine due to malware detection.
#8. You got a Google warning page:
You may have noticed a red page showing that you shouldn’t proceed because this website has malware. Such type of the page may appear on your website if your website has been hacked. It happens when the Google bots crawl your website and detected something malicious and the Google penalizes the website.
#9. The Alexa rank dropped
You all know that Alexa ranking of your website matters a lot. If you notice a sudden fall in the Alexa ranking of your website then you should check for the hack. It may happen because of the hack. There are many tools using which you can come to know whether your website has been hacked or not.
#10. Any page appears different
It may be possible that the hacker has just started the hack and some of the pages of your website have changed. It is because the hackers have changed the database of your website. There may be some other reasons too.
#11. You can’t find your website
You won’t ask how to if my website has been hacked after noticing that you can’t even find your website on the web. When you type the URL of your website and the browser shows that there is no such site then it’s the sign that your whole site has been crashed. To come out of such situations, you should have the backup of your website and the database on your computer hard disk.
After going through all the possible hack situations, you won’t ask how to know if a website has been hacked or not. From all the points mentioned above, any situation may show the symbol of the hack.
Is My WordPress Website Hacked
You can’t predict the future and can’t guess the hack so it’s better to increase the security of your website. If your website gets hacked by anyone then there will be nothing to show your hard work.
You won’t able to enter in your website. Though there are many things to do to get back in the market after a hack. But you know that it would cost you so much time.
Have you ever experienced any of the above-mentioned conditions with your blog? Have you ever asked how to know if my website has been hacked? Well, prevention is always better than the cure.
So, it’s always better to know security tips and tricks of WordPress. Secure your blog using any plugin with the firewall. Don’t let others defeat you and ruin your hard work. Be safe and keep blogging.
Hi Ravi,
It’s really important to know that our website is hacked or not. and you have come up with some amazing points. Thanks for sharing. keep up the Good work.
Hey Robin,
While using the WordPress platform you should know how to check if your website has been hacked. People get annoyed with the page refreshing and finding the bad content on their website.
They should know all the possible sign to catch the website hack.
Thanks for stopping by.
Have a great day.
~Ravi
These are definitely important to consider but, hacker would definitely hack the bank instead hack a small business with only a few dim trying to survive through the day. That’s hard.
Hey Louis,
You have the point but, ask someone who has devoted years to set up and grow the website and then suddenly he/she can’t even able to see that website on the world wide web.
In the field of blogging and web development, people work hard to build a website which can help others and can earn some money. The attack won’t be on the website, it would be at their heart.
Thanks for showing your presence.
Have a nice day.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
You have shared some useful tips which help us to know whether our WordPress websites are hacked or not. I have shared some quality plugins which provide more security to WordPress websites if we use them accordingly. WordFence, BulletProof Security, WP Antivirus Site Protection, Brute Force Login Protection.
Thanks for excellent share ?
Regards
Mairaj
Hey Mairaj,
It’s a good idea to use the plugin like Wordfence, Sucuri and more. People should install the plugins to increase the security level of their WordPress site. The tips I have provided above are the signals that your WordPress website may get hacked.
There are many things to do to secure your website.
Thanks for your support.
Enjoy the day.
~Ravi
Hey Ravi,
Why do people hack blogs? What’s in it?
I see many attempts these days and I wonder.
They used to succeed when I first started, but no more. Because I have the formula now.
All you’ve mentioned in this post are what I ever experienced.
Great eye opening post, bro.
Thank you for sharing.
Francis
Hey Francis,
There is not an answer of this question. There are many people who just want to ruin your hard work. Though it doesn’t provide them anything but still maybe they just want to destroy.
It’s necessary that you should improve your blog’s security. The PHP execution should be disabled. There are many other things to be done.
Thanks for stopping by.
Have a great day.
~Ravi
That’s exactly what I’m thinking, bro. Just to ruin your hard work. It’s evil.
And thanks for the tip.
Francis,
Just focus on your blog and put some security level using the codes or the security plugin. There won’t be any problem after that.
Glad that I could help.
Have safe blogging.
~Ravi
Hey Ravi,
Great tips, especially since most bloggers never think about getting hacked. There are always so many other things most of us don’t put enough emphasis on protecting our blogs.
I’ve been fortunate to not to have to deal with this issue. However, I’ve had clients who were hacked.
The funny thing is that everyone who was hacked was hosting with GoDaddy. Not sure if that has anything to do with it, but I just thought it was kind of strange.
Thanks for sharing these tips with us, at least we now know what to look for and how to protect ourselves.
Have a great day ?
Susan