Lately, more and more websites encounter security issues and most of the time, web developers have to deal with a suite of malware applications that infect the HTML, JavaScript and PHP files on their servers. If you have a WordPress site or blog, here are the main reasons for which you should pay attention to suspicious malware code:
- You risk sending the virus further to your site’s visitors, who click on your website because they know it’s trustworthy.
- You risk your website getting banned and put on the black list of the websites that propagate malware infections.
- You risk receiving negative feedback from your partners, by sending them a link to your infected website.
How do you keep your site safe from unwanted malicious code? The best solution for checking if your website is infected with malware or not is to run a trusted plugin that works with WordPress in order to regularly verify the health of your website’s code. Here are a few solutions that will help you build the trust of your website:
Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC)
Considered one of the best plugins out there, TAC points out pieces of code that look dubious or external links and lets you investigate and decide if those links point to a trustworthy site or to a malicious one. The plugin can also depict fake JQuery links and encrypted PHP backdoors that can make your website vulnerable. Back-up this plugin with a bulletproof plugin and the chances of your website getting hacked will significantly decrease.
Exploit Scanner
Exploit Scanner is a robust free WordPress plugin, which searches more thoroughly in your installation files. It basically checks all the files and the database of your website, looking for signs that can indicate a potential existence of malware code. The downside of this plugin is that it returns many false positive results, so you have to pay attention and check if the errors returned are indeed malicious or not.
Sucuri
Sucuri is considered to be the best WordPress security scanner on the market these days because once installed, the plugin monitors your website permanently against all threats. The plugin scans the website in search for malware code, link injections, spam and defacers (Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of the site or a webpage – source: Wikipedia).
Sucuri also collaborates with anti-spam search engines, in order to establish if the website is considered spam or not (in case someone uses it to send emails). Therefore, if something is not right, the plugin blocks the connected IP. Sucuri also sends alerts when it notices that something unusual is happening in the activity of your site, given that it audits the entire activity to keep track of where things go wrong.
Furthermore, Sucuri also has a plugin that once installed, it offers the webmaster a firewall and a ‘Last Login’ section to be able to see who logged in on the website. As a plus, it also gives some post-hack options if your website was infected and cleaned, such as website update and password resetting for all the website users.