How malicious code can hurt your website
It will be fair to admit that over the last few years the malware business on the internet has been growing constantly. Nowadays, hacking websites is a niche service that you can get online for a certain price. But we will not talk about how to hack someone’s website, we will see what we can do with the website malware and malicious code in your WordPress website.
Sometimes, when you get a theme on some marketplace from a random author, you feel like you’ve got yourself a new Camaro, but the reality is cruel and the appearance of the template can be misleading.
Of course, the majority of the authors do not do that on purpose, they just simply are not good at coding, so their poorly coded themes can have conflicts and different malicious code blocks in the template itself. But the question is, how dangerous is that?
On the other hand, sometimes you can get yourself a free template on the internet, install it and become a happy owner of a WordPress website for the price of nothing, but where is the trick? The trick, my friend, can be hidden in your theme’s code. Hidden backdoors and other malware can be found in such WP themes in a majority of cases. This is a great vulnerability for your future project, so you’ve got to check if your theme is actually safe prior to using it.
What is the ultimate treatment?
Let me give you a shortlist that will consist of three best malware scanning plugins for WordPress and show you what kind of functionality they bring to the table. These are free tools that will give you everything you need in order to fight the malicious code and find weird stuff hidden in your WordPress theme.
Sucuri
Sucuri is simply the best one on the market, especially considering the fact that it costs nothing while giving you a great functionality in order to improve your WordPress website security.
This plugin includes the following features:
- Malware Scanning
- File integrity monitoring
- Post-Hack Security Actions
- Security monitoring
Of course, as any other free solution, Securi has a premium option. You can get yourself a website firewall for a reasonable price (around $16 dollars) and sleep tight while your haters attack your site without any luck of bringing it down.
Exploit Scanner
This one is a little bit more simple, cause it doesn’t really give you so many features as Sucuri, but it doesn’t mean that it’s no good.
Basically, the main functionality that this plugin gives you is searching all over your website for the suspicious files, checking your posts, comments and database tables for malware and malicious elements. Any unusual filename or any other kind of weird activity will be spotted and you will be alerted with the report.
CodeGuard
The CodeGuard plugin is not free, but it’s a very reliable one. This tool will create backups of your website every time they see changes.
After the initial backup, the plugin will start monitoring your website on a daily basis. You know what’s really cool? It will send you emails every day showing the most recent activity and changes on your website.
Everything will be restored in a case of emergency, everything is safe!
Is there an easier solution?
Basically, yes, but that’s more like a problem of your budget. Getting yourself a free or low-cost template is something you can do in case you are not building something serious and you know for sure that your website’s security will not be challenged by anyone. But let me be honest with you, in all other cases, it’s pretty dangerous to trust unknown authors that try to push their free WordPress templates for some reason.
The real solution can be getting yourself a premium template on a trustworthy marketplace that operates more than a few years on the market. Getting yourself a template from one of their authors often include the website support, so you will be able to contact the author in case of finding anything suspicious in a theme.
I believe that any kind of theme should be tested for malicious code. Now you know how it’s done and it means that you are ready to start your own project and be sure that it will be secure as a Fort Knox.
About the Author: Carol James is an EssayLab psychology department writer and senior editor. She has MA degree in social sciences and is an excellent specialist in this field. Carol worked with numerous materials on the subject and is eager to share her knowledge with our readers.
