Website Hacking Repair

Resist wiping files or reinstalling everything before anyone has looked. Deleting the evidence means nobody can tell you how the breach happened, which means it can recur. Take the site to a maintenance page if it is actively harming visitors, but preserve the current state.

Rotate hosting, database and admin passwords from a device you trust, not the possibly compromised one. If the attacker still has a session or a backdoor, changing one password rarely locks them out on its own, which is why full recovery matters more than a quick password reset.

The sooner an engineer is looking at the logs, the more of the timeline is still intact. Logs rotate and overwrite, so an incident reported on day one is far easier to reconstruct than one reported after a fortnight of attempted DIY fixes.

First we confirm the scope: what is affected, whether data was exposed, and whether the attacker still has access. We snapshot the site for evidence before touching anything, so the forensic trail survives the cleanup.

Next we cut off the attacker: kill active sessions, close the backdoors we have found so far, and block the source where we can. Containment stops the bleeding while the deeper work continues.

We compare core and plugin files against known-good copies, review custom code, the theme and the database by hand, and remove injected content, web shells and malicious redirects. A website malware scan alone would miss the obfuscated and disguised parts, so this stage is done by an engineer reading the code.

With the site clean, we bring it back to full working order: repairing defaced pages, restoring damaged content, and confirming forms, checkout and logins all behave. Where a clean backup exists and is genuinely uninfected, we may restore from it, but only after checking the backup itself is not carrying the same compromise.

The problem with restoring from backup

Restoring an old backup feels like the easy fix, and sometimes it is. But if the backup predates the intrusion you lose recent content, and if the vulnerability that let them in is still present, you are simply resetting the clock until the next automated scan finds you. A backup restore without root-cause work is a false economy.

Finally we fix the entry point, patch or replace the vulnerable component, tighten configuration and file permissions, and set up website malware protection so the site is watched going forward. Then we retest, for free, to confirm the repair holds.

Your homepage is replaced with the attacker’s message or a political statement. It is visible, embarrassing and usually paired with a backdoor, so we repair the page and then hunt for how they got write access.

The site looks fine to you but serves spam pages and hidden links to search engines, damaging your ranking and eventually getting you flagged. Recovery here is as much about the database as the files.

The quietest and often the most serious: card skimmers on checkout, or exfiltration of a customer database. This raises breach-reporting duties, so recovery includes working out what data was reachable and documenting it.

Sometimes the attacker changes your credentials or encrypts files and demands payment. We work to regain control through the hosting layer and restore from clean sources rather than paying, wherever that is possible.

A compromised site is often used to send spam or host phishing for other targets, which gets your server blacklisted and your host complaining. Recovery includes stopping the abuse and clearing your reputation.

If personal data was accessed or exfiltrated, GDPR can require you to notify the relevant authority within 72 hours, and sometimes the affected individuals. We help you establish what data was actually at risk so your notification is accurate rather than a guess.

If card data was skimmed, your acquirer and PCI obligations come into play. Our documentation of the skimmer and the payment flow gives you the technical facts those conversations need.

The single most important step is closing the actual entry point. In most cases that is an outdated plugin, a weak credential, or a vulnerable custom script, and once it is fixed the automated tooling that found you moves on to easier targets.

For sites that have been hit before, continuous monitoring and a tuned firewall turn the next attempt into an alert rather than an outage. Website virus removal after the fact always costs more, in money and downtime, than catching the intrusion as it starts.

A website malware scan tells you something is wrong. It does not fix the defacement, recover your locked-out access, reconstruct the timeline, or close the hole. Scans are pattern-matchers, and attackers write their code to slip past patterns and disguise their backdoors inside files that look legitimate. That is why a site can pass a scan and still be owned. A repair is the human work that a scan can only hint at: reading the logs, understanding the intrusion, and returning a site you can actually stand behind.