Today I am sharing a guest article by Michael Evans on what to do when your blog gets “hacked”. Good read if you’re having troubles.
The world is not perfect, not yet at least. So, that means, your blog is still very much vulnerable to malicious attacks and to be really honest, this is quite common in blogosphere. Just take a look around in Malware section of Google Webmaster help Forum or any other forums and you will see the agony and pains of webmasters who are finding it really hard to get to the bottom of things. However, removing malware from your website does not need to be that much difficult, resources are available, in fact, our beloved Google has some great tools to offer, all you need to do is to find a way to use them to your advantages. To make your task easier, here we are going to share some tips that you may or not find awesome (not bragging though.)
Google Safe Browsing diagnostic
This is the coolest ever tool available for free use. As the name suggest, this tool will diagnosis the problem and let you know what went wrong with your website. Moreover, icing on the cake, this tool will give you a brief history of the website of the past ninety days and that will surely come to real help, if you are serious enough to dig down to the core of the problem.
Google will also let you know if they have found any suspicious activity on the website in the given period of time and do not wonder if it shows some links of external sites. It can be caused by third party applications that you are most likely using in your blog to make it look cool. So, not so cool if it is harboring malicious code. Get it removed at the earliest. Are you still wondering how to use this tool, just replace example.com with your domain name:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=example.com
Fetch As Google Bot
To access this awesome tool, you need to be the verified owner of the blog in Google webmaster tool. This is pretty easy. Once you are done with the registration and verification thing, just use this tool to see how Google bot sees your website. There are some malware usually attacks .htaccess file and then shows one version of the website to general users and a completely different version to search engine. Now, this is virtually impossible to track this kind of hacking with open eyes, so you need to borrow Google’s, just kidding though. Just put the URL and let Google bot shows what it finds in your website or alternatively you can simply check the cached copy of your website in Google. If it renders a completely different thing, I fear you need to pull your socks and get ready for some serious action.
Labs | Malware
Google webmaster tool automatically gives you update if Google bots find anything sneaky that might be you might be overlooking. You can find a detail report of malware, if there are any, in the Labs >> Malware section of your webmaster tool.
Check Keywords
Supposed you are blogging on Design and development, so that simply means, Google webmaster tool will show related keywords in keyword section. But if you find some weird keywords like – viagra, sex etc in between, there are something to worry for sure. Try to find how which pages contain these keywords and you will be able to track the culprit code. Remove it and have fun.
Once you are done with the search and destroy operation, you need to send a reconsideration request to Google, mentioning everything. The good thing is that Google has made its review system quite fast and it will not take more than 4 to 5 hours to remove the sign – ‘this Site may harm your computer’.
About the Author:
Michael Evans is a passionate writer and he has been writing for Site2You, which is the best drag and drop website builder. He has written different article on web design, online marketing and SEO. He is equally enthusiastic about latest gadgets.
here is another step by step instruction
http://www.gulaydin.com/this-site-may-harm-your-computer.php
Good stuff… …!
I suggest changing the password regularly, and reporting the hacking to your blog provider, so they can either blog the IP or warn the one hacking
Probably you’re using a blogging service (ie, MSN Spaces, MySpace, etc), so any of the technical attacks are probably out of your hands. This means you’re limited to controlling people from getting in by pretending to be yo
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This was an interesting read.Getting your blog hacked is definitely one of the worst things that can happen to a blogger.A little bit of caution can go a long way.
Thanks! I get very paranoid sometimes when it comes to security, so I tried it and I came clean. Now I can have peace of mind =)