By Lance Mayes
A few days ago woodlandbc.org was hacked. Malware was put on many pages on our site. It took a couple of days of some experts working on it, but they got it clean. Thanks to Gordon Atkinson (consafo.com) and his team of techs!
Here are a few things we learned.
- All websites, no matter the size or content, are a target.
- Google will let you know by email if you’ve been hacked.
- Google will not list you in searches if they think you’ve been hacked.
- Internet browsers (like Chrome and Firefox) will let you know if a website you visit might have malware.
- Keep your theme, engine, plugins and scripts up-to-date. (Ours all were.)
- Make sure your passwords are strong. (This was likely how we were attacked.) Use upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. According to Gordon, you can also “string together four unrelated words if you’re having to log in and out and want to remember. ex: DonkeyHouseBlueFriend. Those are actually very strong passwords.”
- Unless you know quite a bit about web programming and the file system, you will need help getting rid of all the malware. It will probably be everywhere and complex.
- You have to request a malware review from Google after you get all the malware off your site.
We are very thankful for people like Gordon who take care of us.
