A Definitive Guide to Website Hacking and Recovery Procedures

Some days back my one of my blog's pages were being hacked, don't worry it didn't happen entirely with me but unexpectedly i used a script on my page that was hosted on abut-farhan.com(please don't check this URL it holds tons of malware that may harm your personal computer) so my page was being blocked and browsers inability to read resources on that page. Thanks to Google Webmaster Tools they immediately sent me the notifications and i successfully fixed the issue on instant. Stopbadware (a non profit organization ) reports that their tools have helped over 130,000 websites to become de-blacklisted in the last three years.

One common way hackers take advantage of vulnerable sites is by adding spammy pages. These spammy pages are then used for various purposes, such as redirecting users to undesired or harmful destinations. For example, we’ve recently seen an increase in hacked sites redirecting users to fake online shopping sites. Once you recognize that your website may have been hacked, it’s important to diagnose and fix the problem as soon as possible.

Today by this tutorial we'd learn why and how websites being hacked and how to recover website using the most common and traditional ways you can perform.

Who is Hacker?

According to computer security context, a hacker is someone who seeks and exploits weaknesses/vulnerabilities of any website/computer system and affect the functions to the users/user doing it scam or entirely de-functionalize the system. Hackers do it due to motivation by a multitude of reasons, such that profit, protest, or somehow challenge. 

Hacking Types:

Hacking might be on any spectrum specially that is regarded to providing services to wide range of people and almost that has great popularity on its working field. You might consider hacking with most commonly computer system hacking, website hacking, login credentials hacking, etc. 

From these listings we'd learn website hacking in short and how to recover a site after a certain hack

Hackers Targeted Websites

Not all the sites hackers take in actions unless they are great popular on internet and have proven good user experiences. Following are the sites that have highly probabilities of getting hacked

Sites that:

1. Have good content, 
2. Provide great services to users
3. Are heavily popular on internet

How Hackers Land on The Functions?

Hackers start their functions the way they find it much better to faster neutralize the interactions of website and diminishing the usabilities to users.

1. First hackers search for weaknesses or vulnerabilities of website
2. Then they create software program that can deploy this vulnerabilities on many sites to drop the web
3. Hackers use spammy texts, malware softwares, addon update or executable softwares
4. Hackers then target to deactivating or stealing website login credentials or installing software that causes malware on your personal computer and then it steals your login credentials when you access your website
5. When users will access your site they will find something unwanted content that might infect their computer and your website will steadily lose traffic rank on search engines.
6. So overall hackers intention is to hacking a site with spammy content, distributing malware, diminishing good user experiences, making content redundant, and scam your entire site.

After a certain hack although site's running normally the site owner doesn't aware that his site is victimized. When search engines come to your website they will find something trouble. The hackers adding distributed core like malware, software virus or worm which block internal links and deactivate the functions of your website in response to search engines and users.

How to Get Hacked in Notification?

After a certain hack to any website, the site owner may not be aware he might think his site is well running and providing services like as before. But the notification comes to the site owner in various ways

1. Hacked notice on search engine
2. Notification in your browser
3. Message form search engine or
4. An email from a friend

These are primary notifications that you might get after a certain hack of your site. But we'd learn some more advanced manual ways that will help us to find hacked content on our site.

Check your site for suspicious URLs or directories

Using an advanced search operator “site:” search with Google you can easily seek for suspicious activities of your site, such that [site:example.com]. To confirm you that your site includes no suspicious content site:search will help more you effectively than any other ways that you do not recognize.

Google Alert is also an effective technical tool for webmasters which provides supports for websites. Setting up Google alert for your site for specific keywords [site:example.com (viagra|cialis|casino|payday loans)], you’ll receive an email when these keywords are detected on your site.

Search for unnatural Search Queries on Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools provides a rich technical support for webmasters. One of the most recognized tools is Search Queries the page shows Google Web Search queries that have returned URLs from your site. Look for unexpected queries as it can be an indication of hacked content on your site.

You might be getting queries in different languages so be aware, don't dismiss them this may be the result of spammy pages in other languages placed on your website.

Enable email forwarding in Webmaster Tools

Although Google's duty to send the website owner the hacked notification in many ways but manually activating email forwarding in Google Webmaster Tools will help you getting personal email forwarding to your email more quickly. Keep in mind that Google won't be able to detect all kinds of hacked content, but they assure their notifications will help you catch things you may have missed.

Approaches to Recovering Hacked Site

There are 2 primary approaches to recover site hacking anyway.

1. Do it yourself (if you're a tech savvy)
2. Find trusted experts (Like your hoster) if the technical tasks are outside your scope

But we'd learn more elaborate technical guides too

Stay informed 

The Security Issues section in Webmaster Tools will help you showing hacked pages that they detected on your site. Google also provides detailed information to help you fix your hacked site.

Protect your site from potential attacks

Actually hackers hack for specific weak content of your site. So it's better to recover sites from being hacked than to clean up more vulnerable content from your site. Hackers often take advantage of security vulnerabilities on commonly used website management software that can easily spread out malware, worm, and other pharmaceuticals which infect your your content being scam. Here are some pro tips to keep your site safe from hackers:

• Always keep your website management software(CMS) updated
• If your website management software tools offer security announcements, sign up to get the latest updates.
• If the software for your website is managed by your hosting provider, try to choose a provider that you can trust to maintain the security of your site.

How About Yours?

I hope that this guide will help you to learn something about website hacking and other related issues. As the Website Hacking is becoming a traditional manner to hackers on internet and website owners (those who have popular websites and blogs) have to be more warned whether they wanna secure their website content. Many a time websites that are run through website management softwares(CMS) getting hacked and more importantly they lose their admin panel login credentials that's why WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other CMSs are on possibilities to be hacked more than server based site management system like Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal etc.

Now it's time to check your site's circumstances: do you find any unnatural or suspicious content, keywords or any other issues like slowing down your page speed, taking more time to response resources by browsers. Check your site performances using Google speed test. Your more effectiveness on your site only can help you to protect your content from being hacked. 

Stay safe folks with success in blogging...