WordPress Malware Removal

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WordPress Malware Removal

WordPress is an open-source CMS that has become very popular over the past few years. WordPress sites are often hacked and malware is often injected into them, which can compromise the site’s performance and make it even less secure than before. This article will detail how to remove WordPress malware from your WordPress site.

WordPress Security – What You Need To Know

In WordPress, WordPress security should be a priority. WordPress is an open-source CMS that has been built from the ground up to be secure and allow you to run a safe WordPress site. WordPress provides a lot of WordPress security tools that you can use to harden your WordPress site. WordPress also offers plugins for everything from form validation to file encryption. These WordPress security tools will help even the most novice WordPress user create a more secure WordPress site.

The reason that WordPress is an easy target, is because every WordPress site out of the box has the same setup. WordPress CMS comes with default WordPress usernames, WordPress passwords, WordPress directories and WordPress installation. This makes it easy for hackers to target WordPress sites because they know exactly where everything is on the WordPress site.

Having said this, there are two major issues we see time and time again when cleaning up hacked sites.

Basic username and passwords

When WordPress is installed, a WordPress username and password are required to administrate the WordPress site. Unfortunately, WordPress by default comes with admin as both the WordPress username and for the WordPress password. For anyone who knows anything about WordPress security will tell you that this is a major no-no that can compromise your entire WordPress site.

In fact, according to one recent study, there were more than 1 million WordPress sites compromised because of weak usernames and passwords set up when installing WordPress. This shows how crucial it is to secure these two items in particular on your WordPress site.

Outdated WordPress Core and Plugins

Another WordPress security issue that WordPress administrators face is outdated WordPress core and WordPress plugins. WordPress is an open-source CMS which means it’s constantly being updated with new WordPress core files as well as new plugins updates.

These updates often include WordPress security patches as well as speed improvements to the WordPress site, so not updating your WordPress core and/or plugins can lead to a major loss in the performance of your WordPress site. This is another big issue we see time and time again when cleaning up hacked WordPress sites. The hackers will often target these areas by exploiting outdated files on the website.

The solution for this problem is relatively easy but does take some work from you, the administrator of the WordPress site. Being diligent about keeping both your WordPress Core and Plugins is a critical step in ensuring you don’t get hacked!

WordPress Plugins – What You Need To Know

As stated before, plugins are extremely important when it comes to hardening your WordPress site. WordPress plugins provide users of the open-source CMS something that closed-source systems do not have: choice. With every WordPress update, new plugins are made available for WordPress users to choose from. However, this means that you need to be cautious with what you install on your WordPress website as there are thousands of plugins out there that are no longer supported, meaning, they most likely have some vulnerabilities. Hackers know this and will exploit WordPress security flaws to gain access to WordPress websites if they can find any vulnerabilities in the WordPress plugins.

This is where WordPress security is crucial. Whenever you install a WordPress plugin, it’s important to keep track of plugin reviews, ratings, when it was last updated. If there are no WordPress updates available, that doesn’t mean everything is fine, you still need to keep on top of the updates.

I also double-check the Plugin support tab as often you can get valuable insight into how the developers respond to support tickets. WordPress security is paramount to WordPress users so it’s vital you invest the necessary time in WordPress plugin research.

WordPress Core – What You Need To Know

Much like WordPress plugins, WordPress core files are extremely important when it comes to WordPress security. WordPress updates come out every three months for WordPress users to download and install on their WordPress sites. These WordPress core files will contain new WordPress features as well as bug fixes, speed improvements of the core CMS platform.

However, not all WordPress updates are created equal. Not all updates are meant for everyone which makes updating your WordPress site crucial in maintaining optimum WordPress performance levels but also making sure that your WordPress website doesn’t break.

It is always recommended to take a backup before you run any kind of update.

There are three WordPress updates you need to be aware of.

Minor WordPress Updates. These are WordPress security updates that do not require WordPress users to update their WordPress core files. WordPress security patches for WordPress plugins or WordPress themes, etc., will usually fall under this category.

Major WordPress updates. This is the second type of WordPress core file update and these types of updates are released every six months with new features as well as many bug fixes for the WordPress CMS platform engine.

If a major WordPress update comes out, it’s recommended that you look through the changes before updating your site, however, I always recommend running a backup beforehand just in case anything goes wrong during the process on your website.

Security WordPress Update – The critical release of every WordPress update. WordPress sites that are not updated with WordPress updates within the WordPress core files have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit to gain access to WordPress websites, install malware or even redirect visitors.

Using WordPress security best practices is vital when it comes to keeping your WordPress site secure.

Make sure you’re always running the latest version of WordPress for optimum WordPress performance levels.

Keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date is important as well so you are always protected against any new WordPress vulnerabilities exploited by hackers. Also, if anyone else has access to your server, updating WordPress will protect them from hackers installing malware on their accounts as well!

Final Thoughts on WordPress Malware

WordPress is a powerful and open-source CMS platform that enables WordPress users to build anything from small personal blogs all the way up to full eCommerce sites.

WordPress has been around since 2003, but its popularity exploded in 2005 with WordPress 2.0 when WordPress became easy for non-technical people to use. With over 60 million websites running WordPress today, you can’t deny that WordPress is an important part of internet culture and digital marketing strategies as well.

But while the potential benefits are great, so too are risks associated with using such a popular site-building tool like WordPress without security best practices in place.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash