virus

[sensei m]

hi, a web developer told me i have a virus on my site kikomi.com … I’m coming to you with this question Is the virus attached to the theme… do you think i can delete the whole website off off wordpress and out my cpanel and just redo it? Because im thinking the website has the virus not my domain name…

thank you… just trying to get a second opinion before i pay a lot of money to get it removed…

[Bill Robbins]

I ran a quick scan of your site at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/kikomi.com and it did pull up malware on your site. It sounds like the site has been hacked. Could be through an exploit in a plugin, or an insecure username/password combination or something else. I don’t ship out themes with any malware, but if a hacker has gained access to the site they could add malicious code to the theme, any plugin or the WordPress core.

You could get a company like Sucuri.net to clean it out for you. You could also completely delete the WordPress installation including the database and then start from a new, fresh installation. That would also do the trick.

Awful way to start the holidays. Sorry about that. If I can help out, let me know.

Take care,
Bill

[sensei m]

Okay thank you for your response. Is there away to prevent this from happening in general? Like virus protection for all your websites?

I am leaning toward deleting the wordpress installation and starting from scratch… I know you said i can do that but would you recommend that?

thank you!

[Bill Robbins]

Deleting and starting over is a tough choice. It should be effective. It’s probably the cheapest option since you won’t be hiring out the clean up.

To keep this from happening again, make sure to keep everything on the site updated: the WordPress core, your plugins and themes (even inactive ones). Choose strong passwords and never use “admin” for the username. That was the default for a long time and many hacker bots are set to use that in attacking sites. If they know your username the odds of breaking in are much higher.

Lots of people like WordFence (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/) and other security plugins.

Security is one reason I host with WP Engine. Protection is one of their features and I appreciate that.

Take care,
Bill

[sensei m]

Thank you so much!

[Bill Robbins]

Anytime. Hope the new start works well for you.

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