Malware
What is malware?
Malware on a website is code somebody else put there that works for them, not for you: it redirects visitors, hides links to other sites, reads what customers type into forms, or sends spam from your server. It usually arrives through an outdated plugin, a weak password or a neighbouring site in the same hosting account. You rarely notice it first; a customer, your host or Google does.
Example
The owner hears it from outside, not from inside: a customer calls to say the site opens someone else’s page on a phone. In the admin panel everything looks normal. The signs that turn up next are the usual ones:
- The redirect fires only for visitors arriving from Google on a phone; anyone typing the address on a desktop sees nothing.
- There is a .php file in the uploads folder, dated two months ago.
- An administrator account exists that nobody remembers creating.
- The host reports thousands of messages sent from the account overnight.
The way in turns out to be a plugin with no update for two years. The date on the foreign file shows the code had been there long before anyone noticed, which is the normal case: malware rarely breaks a site, it uses it.
Why it matters for a business
The damage runs in three directions at once. Search engines can put a warning in front of your pages and the traffic stops for days. The host suspends the account to protect the other sites on the server, so the site disappears without anyone attacking it further. The domain lands on spam lists and order confirmations stop reaching customers. And if the code is reading what people type into your forms, the incident is now a personal data breach, with notification deadlines attached.
What to ask
- How quickly are core and plugin updates installed, and who watches for them?
- Is there a second factor for administrators, and how many accounts sit unused?
- Where do backups live, on the same server or off it, and when was a restore last tested?
- Does anyone monitor changed files, new administrators and sudden outbound mail?
- How many sites share one hosting account? An infection travels between them.
Updates, monitoring and tested backups are the daily work of website maintenance. If a site is already affected, the first steps are set out in the answers on our cybersecurity page.