Help! I've been hacked!
I recently had a call for help from a client I’d worked with earlier in the year. They’d gone to check on their site, only to find the white screen of death. The only thing left on their site was a tag line stating they’d been “Hacked by Mr Green”.
Following some investigation, it turned out that my client had got caught up in life and hadn’t been performing regular maintenance on their site. In fact, they hadn’t even looked at it for several weeks.
Mr Green on the Web with the Malware.
Enter in Mr Green! As alarming as it sounds, this is not actually someone personally targeting my client. Mr Green is actually a bit of malware floating around the sea of the world wide web waiting for its moment to strike. Like, for instance, through the security holes caused by outdated software. To make matters even worse, another hacker had come in through the vulnerability caused by the Mr Green malware and completely wiped the original WordPress – replacing it with a blank one of their own. For what purpose, I’ll never know! But it has left my client without a site and back to square one – they now need to start again from scratch.
Moral of the story? UPDATES!
So, as the end to this cautionary tale – do your updates! Even if you have them set to auto-update (always a good idea!), you should still check in with your site at least once a week to see if anything needs doing. 5 minutes is all it will take to keep things ship-shape!
If you’re not confident with the back-end of your site, ask your web developer if they offer a web master service. This is normally a monthly service that includes regular checks and updates to ensure the smooth running of your site. They may also include page updates of copy, images and videos in their package so you can keep your pages fresh and up-to-date.
Check out our Monthly Service Packages
Looking for more help?
If you’d like to find out more about how to increase your online security, I would strongly suggest joining the South West Cyber Resilience Center – they have free memberships and have been set up to support business owners with their security.