Malware is one of the strongest weapons cybercriminals use to steal your personal information without your consent. Malware also can cause harm to a website. Malware is a malicious code that is secretly installed on your website, PC, or laptop without your knowledge. Malware is generally used by criminals online to involve in financial fraud. When it comes to businesses, criminals use malware to steal customer data. Likewise, malware can be used to steal sensitive business information. If your website has been infected, it could harm your reputation and result in you losing your valuable customers.
With millions of malware threats being released every day, you need to always find ways to protect yourself. If you believe your website is infected, you should take steps immediately to verify there is in fact malware on your website before it is too late. There are a lot of reliable tools that will help you to check your website for malware. Read on to know where and how to check your website for malware.
Here is Where You Will Need to Check Your Website for Malware
Cybercriminals focus on three areas to hide malware.
Themes and plugins
Themes and plugins are favorite spots for hackers to hide malware. Inactive and outdated plugins and themes are the places they focus on to install malware. You need to be careful when it comes to your website using outdated plugins and themes. You could be vulnerable to malware attacks, in this case. You should go ahead and remove inactive and outdated themes and plugins. Additionally, you can go for a plugin to remove malware in themes you suspect to be infected.
Core Files
Next comes core files. Attackers choose to hide malware in the core files of websites as this is where they can find outdated installations. They can also hide malware in updated installations. If you happen to visit a website infected by malware, your system is more likely to be infected by malware. This malware could get into your website if you happen to upload files to your website from the infected computer.
Hosting
Shared hosting is not considered secure as malware can infect all the sites or most of the websites on the hosted server. In this case, it may not be easy to locate the malware as it can be hidden in any location.
Common Signs of Malware
Though you may not be able to quickly find out that your website has been infected, there are a few ways through which you can check your website for malware. Website defacement is one common sign of malware on your website. The following are other signs that your website is infected.
- Your website might behave abnormally and might crash or freeze often.
- If you notice a change in your website’s login information and if you had not done it, make sure to check your website for malware.
- Your search engine rankings could go down if your website has been infected. Check your rankings and your website’s overall health by visiting Google Webmaster Tools.
- You could also experience a drop in website traffic.
- Malware could delete or modify your website files. If you spot that something is missing, it could be a sign that your website has been infected.
However, to be assured that your website is not infected, you will need to monitor your website often. Likewise, take backups of your website. You can use tools like HostPapa that will automatically back up your website. Even if your website gets infected, taking backups will help you restore your website after the attack.
How to Automatically Scan My Website for Malware?
Though you can check your website for malware by looking at the source code or the files, with cybercriminals getting more and more active, it would be a great choice to have a tool to scan your website for malware automatically. High levels of criminal activities are being reported these days, so it is important to make sure you do not become a victim of such crimes.
You can go for an automatic website scanner that will scan your website every day for malware. Similarly, it would be a wise choice to go for a tool that will not just stop with scanning your website but that can also remove the malware if found. Such tools that will automatically scan your website will help you save a lot of time and will also keep your website safe and secure.
Malware infections will not just harm your website but will harm your website visitors, as well. You will lose your Google rankings and your overall reputation. You can prevent all this from happening by making sure your website is safe by using an automatic malware scanner.
Such scanners will scan your website for shell scripts, spam, and backdoor files. The scanner will immediately notify you of the malware soon after it is found. Similarly, it will also automatically remove the malware so that you don’t need to spend time checking your source code or other files.
CodeGuard is one of the security tools that comes with a malware scanner, called MalwareGone, that will scan your website and also help you remove the malware from your website. There are other malware scanners too; you can always do your research before choosing the right one for your website.
Conclusion
With cybercrimes on the rise, it is important to be proactive and make sure your website is secure. Keeping your website free from malware is not just important for the security of your website but for your visitors’ online security, as well.