Tips For Your Website To Stay Safe! Stay Hack Free!

A large number of websites are hacked and blacklisted every day. Several hacked and blacklisted websites are genuine and of reputed organizations, online gateways, educational sites, entertainment channels and much more. The hacking and blacklisting happen frequently and consequently, the website gets hacked and having malicious script injected without the consent of the websites' owner. In this KB article, we give some best practices to help website owners stay safe and stay off hacks and blacklists.

Following Are The Most Common Reasons Why Websites Get Hacked:-

• An application such WordPress are third party CMS & are more vulnerable to hacking.
• Trojan on your server as well as local PC and it has stolen your FTP or control panel password to enter into your site(s) to change the code or put virus.
• Poor password (FTP or root).
• Weak permissions (permissions like 777).
• Using weak code in your script.
• Using an older version of software/application.
• Old files are often indexed by search engines. So even if you do not link to those pages anymore, the search engines list them for Internet users to find and visit. Automated programs to search for these files can find them to exploit them.

You Need To Take Care Of Following Things To Prevent It In Future:

• Use only those WordPress themes which have high ratings, so as to reduce the possibility of hacking.
• Scan your local computer for viruses with updated Antivirus and remove viruses/Trojans.
• Download files from your sites to local PC, scan them, remove viruses and then upload them again.
• Use a strong password and change it regularly (FTP, root or main user).
• Don't keep full permissions like 777 (the permissions should be 755 for folders and 644 for files).
• Don't use the weak code in your script.
• Use a website vulnerability scanner like WHUK Site Scanner to keep your website continuously protected.
• Always use updated version of your script/application/software (but before upgrading check bugs or it should be recommended by the vendor).