Help! My Website Got Hacked!

Getting your website hacked can be the bane of your existence, especially if you don’t know how to fix the issue yourself. Websites are prone to hacking: a common issue that gets the best of us and is something you can’t avoid forever. It’s bound to happen. However, the way you react and get rid of the issue affects the damage done, and with the help of a professional, minimises any impairment and downtime.

Your primary task after getting hacked is to ensure the secure storage of sensitive information and get a professional to fix it for you. We assist with removing hacks and making your website safe while protecting your data, domain and hosting.
We not only fix the hack but help monitor it continually to help prevent future attacks.

Here’s how we do it!

1. Once you’ve identified that you’ve been hacked, we start by locking things down to minimise any additional damage. Hopefully, you have backups of your website, but if not, we will create one. Backups are essential in the continuation of your operations, and we help store and monitor them continually to protect them and your live site.
2. We scan your website for the hack using external remote scanners or application-level scanners. These are designed to search and report on anything out of the ordinary. This helps us to narrow down exactly where the hack is hiding and work on getting it out.

3. We check your hosting provider to make sure the hack hasn’t affected more than just your site. If it has, your hosting provider will be able to confirm it, giving us more information to search and destroy the malware or virus accurately.

4. We find and remove the hack an the hacked content. The exact way we do it changes on a site to site basis as each hack, malware or virus is different from each other and works in different ways.

What are the types of hacks, malware and viruses? Why are they targeting you?
The most common hacks we deal with are the Chinese spam hack, adware, and malware hacks.
The Chinese spam hack inputs malicious code into your website and changes your site content from English to Chinese. The consequences of this are loss of SEO efforts, Google blacklisting, loss of consumer trust and revenue, and suspended hosting.

Adware is a software that automatically displays unwanted advertisements on your computer and website. Most of the time, adware is a nuisance to deal with and just annoying. Sometimes, it can alter your page and links so that more adware is added to your site and to the computer your potential client is viewing your website on.

Malware is a software developed by cyber attackers with the intention of gaining access or causing damage to a computer or network. The victim remains oblivious while the sinister hack is making its way through your personal information.

When your website gets hacked, it can feel like someone is out to get you. Most often this isn’t the case, as most hacks, malware and viruses are just exploiting any loophole into the backend of your website because their prominence on your site’s pages is the only way they make money. It isn’t personal and it isn’t about you or your business. They just want to make some quick cash.

Despite hacking seeming quite scary, it can be avoided or at least quickly dealt with when you enlist the help of a professional.

We not only fix hacks, but we continually monitor your site for any signs of incoming attacks to help prevent them in the future. Contact (07) 3417 8317 if you need assistance.