What is Malware?
The term Malware is short for malicious software.
Malware is a common term used when referring to harmful applications or malicious code such as viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware or even adware.
So Malware does not always mean you have a harmful virus on your website, it can be as little as an unwanted pop-ups or adverts. Either way Malware is unwanted content that you do not want on your website.
What can I do to help prevent my website being compromised?
- If you are using a content management system, such as Joomla or WordPress, installing the latest version, and keeping it patched up-to-date, will help minimise the risks of your website being compromised.
- Setting a more secure username and password, try to avoid using a commonly known username such as admin and set a password that cannot be easily guessed by including numbers, symbols(@ & ! etc), and upper case letters.
- Ensure any devices you use to log into your website, either by a back end portal or FTP, are checked for viruses.
- Scan your website regularly using a scanning tool such as SiteLock.
- SiteLock can find and remove malware from anywhere on your site and protects your site using a firewall to prevent harmful visitors from entering your site.
How do I remove Malware if my website has been compromised?
The higher level SiteLock Package comes with SMART (Secure Malware Alert & Removal Tool) technology, which performs deep website scans at set intervals to detect malware and automatically remove it, the SMART feature offers SiteLock customers an additional layer of security to ensure peace of mind.
If you do not have this feature we recommend the following manual steps.
- Take your website offline by moving your web content out of the web directory.
- Remove the offending code.
- Thoroughly check your website for any additional compromises, by scanning your website. A scanning tool such as ClamAV is a good tool for this and is free.
- Once you have done this re upload the cleaned version of your website