WordPress is one of the most popular and versatile content management systems. It is a professional platform with an interactive interface and highly functional features, still managing security is a challenging task for WordPress users. This blog will definitely help those who are looking for a detailed WordPress Malware Removal Guide to know how it can affect your website.
No matter how many security plugins you have installed and how often you perform scanning for viruses, there are still many ways malware can get into your website. If your website is already infected, removing the malware would not be easy. However, with the right knowledge and tools, you can identify and clean any type of malware from your site.
This article is an updated guide to identify and remove malware from the WordPress website. You must follow the steps mentioned in this article to get rid of malware and get your website back to optimal condition.
Table of Contents
How Does Malware Infect A WordPress Site?
Below are some major problems that can happen to your website when it is infected by malware.
- It increases your server resources consumption, including MySQL and web.
- You may start seeing unwanted ads on your site.
- Your site may get blacklisted by Google.
- Your customer data is stolen by some hacker.
- You start getting alert messages that your website is infected or hacked.
- Data is disappearing from your website.
If you are detecting any of the above-mentioned signs, it is alarming, and you should try and fix the issues as soon as possible. Ignoring the warning signs can not just make your website more vulnerable to hacking and data breaches but also damage the SEO of your site.
7 Step Guide to Remove WordPress Malware
There are many ways you can remove malware from your website. There are 7 Steps of WordPress Malware Removal that are described here.
Install Security Plugins
Tons of security plugins are available to prevent hacking and data breaches on your WordPress site. Installing security plugins is the easiest way to prevent and detect malware on your site.
By installing these plugins, you will get a lot of scanning options for your website that can help you detect all malicious files on your server. Here you should consider one thing: to make your plugins work efficiently, you should use all the required resources.
Using different plugins can create chaos, so you should better ensure that there are no built-in plugins. Moreover, you should have plenty of free resources on your server to run your website scanner.
Recommended Blog: Ultimate WordPress Security Tips
Get Rid of Unnecessary Plugins
You can easily find thousands of WordPress plugins for maintaining WordPress security, but you can’t simply install all of them. All you have to do is, use a code snippet and you can easily get away with security issues – that too without compromising your website performance.
Having multiple plugins on your site also increases security issues. So, you better remove all the unnecessary security plugins from your site and keep the most essential ones installed.
Security plugins are significant to prevent hacking, data breaches, cybercrime, and malware on your website, but having unnecessary plugins can create conflicts.
Check For Recent File Modification
To detect malicious files on your site, the best way is to sort the files by modification date. There are more chances that a recently modified file contains malicious data. Doing this, most recently modified files will appear on the top. Out of these files, you might detect a file that you have not changed. It is a sign that it is infected and has some malicious code inside that is causing the issues.
The process of sorting files and going through all of them one by one can be time-consuming. You can also use some online tools to automate the file sorting and evaluation process. Once all the files are reviewed, you should immediately delete the ones that contain malicious code inside.
Perform A Website Backup
If you had created a website backup before it got infected, it can be so helpful in restoring files and data on your site. A site backup is your savior whenever any mishap happens, such as hacking, malware, etc. You can easily restore your website and get it back to optimal condition through site backup.
However, it is not guaranteed that your website is secured after restoring it. If your plugin is not well maintained by developers or if it is outdated, the malware will keep coming back.
So, before restoring your website through the backup, it is important to fix your security loopholes, so this wouldn’t happen again.
You can generate a website backup to download all of your files to the server. Using the anti-virus scanner, you can easily scan the files extracted from backup. In this process, you will detect the malicious files, if any, you can then delete these files and fix the issues.
Scan Site And Change Passwords
To scan your website, you can use an Anti-Malware tool that would stop malware from spreading across your system. If you need to export any data, it has to be scanned to ensure it is infection-free. Make sure you have also scanned your website, not just your computer.
To keep your website secured, it is important to change your password right away as you detect any signals of malware or hacking.
So, the question here is, which passwords do you need to change? Well, you have to change the passwords of hosting panels, FTP, user databases, and administrative level user passwords.
Make sure your new passwords are strong and secure. Your passwords should contain 8 characters, including symbols and numbers. Passwords should be unique and must not be related to your personal life info, such as your date of birth.
Download And Install WordPress
Once you have done scanning after eliminating the malicious files, it’s time to download and reinstall your WordPress site. When it comes to website installation, you can either do it manually or use a one-click installation tool provided by your service provider. For the manual installation, you have to download the updated version of WordPress and install it using the FTP client. On the flip side, by using a one-click installer, you can easily install your WordPress site from your control panel.
Once your website is installed, you have to create your new admin passwords that should be different from your current password. Make sure you create a strong password that is hard to guess.
Now your website is all set and running. But, haven’t you deleted your plugins, remember? Now, you can reinstall all the themes and plugins. You must reinstall your plugins; never upload the old plugins because you don’t really know if they are infected.
Strengthen Your WordPress Security
As you have followed all the WordPress malware removal steps, your website is in an optimal mode. Now it’s time to harden your website security to prevent malware attacks in the future. Following are some effective security tips you must follow.
- Firstly, you better find a reliable service provider that provides good website security with optimized website performance.
- Use the plugins that are maintained and updated by developers to enhance your website security and improve its performance.
- Never use “admin” as your username, it makes it easier for hackers to guess your username and breach your data.
- Generate strong passwords to avoid hacking, you can use a password generator to create secure passwords.
- To prevent unauthorized access, you must limit your login to three attempts. An authorized user can enter the right password at least in 3 attempts.
- To ensure secure transfer of content from your website, you must use secure protocols, such as HTTPS, or SFTP.
Summing Up
In a nutshell, it is very common to get your website infected with malware. It is important to make a quick response to the alarming signs occurring on your website. This article is a detailed guide to remove malware from your website by following 7 simple steps.
By following the guidelines mentioned in this article you can keep clean malware from your site and get it back to functionality. Most of the time following the above-mentioned steps is enough to detect and clean the malware. If still you’re having any issues, and your website is not working optimally, you better contact your service provider to get expert assistance. The technical team of your service provider such as Temok can help you detect and mitigate the security issues, and if there is any malware, they’ll fix it.