Last week I received a very helpful but rather shocking message from one of my e-mail subscribers, informing me one of my websites had been hacked!
That was a tad embarrassing, and I probably should keep schtum about it!
However, what I learnt as a result of the incident is far too valuable for me to not share with you. If you’re able to use my experience to prevent the same happening to you then all’s well in the World!
MALWARE!
First of all, I don’t know how or why (the investigation continues!) but a malicious hacker somehow had managed to ‘inject’ my website’s key files with ‘malware’ … a small piece of code that randomly sent visitors off to a web site somewhere deep in Russia.
Luckily for me the malware didn’t work.
As far as I know, the worst anyone saw was a big red warning message. (I never found out what the Russian website was about… I dread to think!)
Although I never profess to be an expert at web site security, I had a good idea of what the problem involved, and where to go to fix it.
Today my site is now one hundred percent malware free.
How can I be so sure?
Well, since I discovered my sites had been hacked I signed up for a brilliant malware scanning service, called Sucuri.
Every day they automatically scan every file across my entire website, making sure it hasn’t been compromised.
When I first signed up for their service, they initially scanned all of my web sites, and here’s a screenshot of the rather unsettling results I got after one of their scans… (the handwritten annotation is mine)
Results of malware scanning service (click to view)
Once their scan detected a problem, the Sucuri team then fixed every infected file, on every infected website. (Unfortunately I had a few — all injected with the same malware.)
This all happened over a weekend, and the cost of fixing the infected files was included as part of the same service… it didn’t cost me any extra. To say I’m impressed is an understatement.
PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE
In future I will be the first to know of any security issues, before my valued subscribers ever become aware there’s a problem.
Of course, in hindsight this type of service is something I should have had in place a long time ago, but ain’t hindsight easy!
So, first takeaway — if you want to avoid a Russian hacking nightmare – check out Sucuri.
The other big thing I learnt from this experience is the important of taking incremental backups.
HOW TO BACKUP YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE AUTOMATICALLY, EVERY DAY.
Soon after I discovered I’d been hacked, I accidentally deleted an important file on my edrivis.com website — and broke the entire site. It literally disappeared. If you visited the site immediately after I did that you would have seen a picture of a Yeti in a snowstorm. (I.e. A blank white screen!)
Now anyone will tell you – backups are important. But in this case restoring a backup would not have done me any good, because the very last backup I took contained the Russian malware. In other words I would have reinfected the site that had just been fixed. Not good.
Thankfully some time ago I did have the foresight to register for a brilliant WordPress backup service – that not only automatically takes a backup every 6 hours… it keeps a history of those backups too.
To get an older copy of the file I accidentally deleted, before it was infected, I simply logged into my WordPress backup service, (called Blogvault) and downloaded a slightly older version of the file.
I copied it onto my server, and voila… I was completely up and running again.
Once all my sites were Malware free, the next step was to make sure the hackers couldn’t reinfect the files. My decision here was to move my websites to a more secure server, and once again it was BlogVault to the rescue.
Normally moving a large WordPress website can be about as much fun as watching paint dry, with lots of time-wasted downloading files to your computer and then slowly uploading them all to the new server.
Thanks to BlogVault I didn’t have to do any of that.
I just used the ‘Move Site’ feature and in literally just a few minutes my website (more than 1GB of files) was installed on a brand new server.
All I then had to do was change the nameservers of my domain name and voila… job done.
HOW TO AVOID MY RUSSIAN HACKING NIGHTMARE
If your business websites run on WordPress, take a look at Blogvault. Knowing that you have access to automatic incremental backups gives incredible peace of mind.
And definitely take a look at Sucuri — regardless of how your website works, because it seems to be compatible with any type of website – Windows, Unix/Linux, etc.
For as long as I run my websites on WordPress I’m going to use these services. They’re an essential part of my web marketing infrastructure now.
