Getting your website hacked is not a new thing. The websites are usually prone to get hacked, and there are various steps that you must take to get rid of such issues. The website is a property of a single person, company or multiple individuals. The famous websites are at a risk always that they might get hacked by someone. It is a common issue that people and companies are discussing recently. The cybercrime of hacking the websites is increasing with time.
To know more about this, check out the following article: Hacked Website Repair | Fix Website Hack In Five Easy Steps
What Is Malware?
Malware is the collective name for several malicious software variants, including viruses, ransomware, and spyware. Shorthand for malicious software, malware typically consists of code developed by cyberattackers, designed to cause extensive damage to data and systems or to gain unauthorized access to a network. Malware is typically delivered in the form of a link or file over email and requires the user to click on the link or open the file to execute the malware.
Malware has been a threat to individuals and organizations since the early 1970s when the Creeper virus first appeared. Since then, the world has been under attack from hundreds of thousands of different malware variants, all with the intent of causing the most disruption and damage as possible.
What Does Malware Do?
All kinds of things. It’s a very broad category, and what malware does or how malware works changes from file to file. The following is a list of common types of malware, but it’s hardly exhaustive:
- Virus: Like their biological namesakes, viruses attach themselves to clean files and infect other clean files. They can spread uncontrollably, damaging a system’s core functionality and deleting or corrupting files. They usually appear as an executable file (.exe).
- Trojans: This kind of malware disguises itself as legitimate software, or is hidden in legitimate software that has been tampered with. It tends to act discreetly and create backdoors in your security to let other malware in.
- Spyware: No surprise here — spyware is malware designed to spy on you. It hides in the background and takes notes on what you do online, including your passwords, credit card numbers, surfing habits, and more.
- Worms: Worms infect entire networks of devices, either local or across the internet, by using network interfaces. It uses each consecutively infected machine to infect others.
- Ransomware: This kind of malware typically locks down your computer and your files, and threatens to erase everything unless you pay a ransom.
- Adware: Though not always malicious, aggressive advertising software can undermine your security just to serve you ads — which can give other malware an easy way in. Plus, let’s face it: pop-ups are annoying.
- Botnets: Botnets are networks of infected computers that are made to work together under the control of an attacker.
How Does Malware Spread?
Each type of malware has its unique way of causing havoc, and most rely on user action of some kind. Some strains are delivered over email via a link or executable file. Others are delivered via instant messaging or social media. Even mobile phones are vulnerable to attack. Organizations must be aware of all vulnerabilities so they can lay down an effective line of defense.
How To Detect Malware?
Certain strains of malware are easier to detect than others. Some, like ransomware and adware, make their presence known immediately, either by encrypting your files or by streaming endless ads at you. Others, like Trojans and spyware, go out of their way to hide from you as long as possible, meaning they could be on your system a long time before you realize that they’re present. And then there are others, like viruses and worms, that might operate in secret for a time, before the symptoms of their infection start to appear, such as freezing, deleted or replaced files, sudden shutdowns, or a hyperactive processor.
The only surefire way to detect all malware before it infects your PC, Mac, or mobile is to install anti-malware software, which will come packaged with detection tools and scans that can catch malware currently on your device, as well as block malware trying to infect it.
Website Malware Removal
If you do decide to extract malicious code yourself, here’s how:
- Identify the source. You can do this through a file manager, local file search, or command line. Most web hosts offer file managers, though they’re generally optimized for basic file modification, rather than for specific content searches. A local search — as its name suggests — involves downloading the contents of your live site to your local machine, making the search process a little simpler. Access to a command line is rare in a shared hosting scenario, but if you have it, you can perform a far more nuanced search. With it, you can find files that have been recently modified as well as specific contents within files.
- Look for the right clues.When you dofind files you believe may have been infected, look closely for the common syntax used by attackers when injecting malware into a site. Be sure to look for any of the following PHP code snippets: eval, base64_decode, fromCharCode, gzinflate, shell_exec, globals, error_reporting(). These represent just a handful of countless functions used by modern cybercriminals, but they’re present in many PHP hacks.
- Remove the malware.Once you’ve identified corrupt files, remove them, and your site will be malware-free. While it’s possible to manually remove malware, we always recommend using a website scanner for speed and accuracy. The SiteLock SMART scanner, for example, automates malware detection and elimination. It uses a file transfer protocol scan to download, inspect, and clean website files. Then, it uploads those files back to the host server without disrupting the user experience.
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