How To Fix Your Hacked JoomlaSite?

Joomla has plenty of powerful in-built features, making it one of the most used CMS to create websites. Here, one can access unique features like a banner manager, template manager, weblink manager, menu manager, user manager, etc. Unfortunately, its fame is becoming one of the attractive points for hackers to misuse it. Therefore, how to fix your hacked Joomla site is becoming one of the hot topics.

Your online website is the face of your brand to the world. If that gets hacked, you need to fix it as soon as possible because it’s about your brand’s reputation. You might have put a lot of effort into building a platform that everyone now recognizes. But just a hack can shatter it down in a few seconds.

Therefore you must always be one step forward and more intelligent than these black hat hackers. Before they find a way to access your site, be equipped and ready to tackle the situation. Hence, you can learn one of the best ways to fix your hacked Joomla site.

How To Fix Your Hacked Joomla Site?

Clean the database

SQL Injection is one of the primary reasons behind the hack of Joomla sites. It can also create new database users. Most hackers tend to develop new users to execute malicious activities. Moreover, there are many codes that you can use to detect this thing.

Furthermore, if you get to know about any such user, you have to delete them immediately. Remove that SQL statement. It is essential because there are chances that the same thing will happen again. Therefore always sanitize the user input and prohibit the database authorizations for the specific user account.

Safeguarding The Server

Even though your installation process is safe, the server is likely to be faulty. It can cause a hack to your Joomla website even after an accurate installation. Therefore, you must secure your server against such vulnerabilities. Here are a few essential points to help you:

1. Always make a not to close any open server
2. Removing the subdomains that are of no use
3. Make sure to check the configuration issues
4. Make use of subnetting or VPN while sharing of server
5. Block down all the error messages that can leak the information
6. Create a strong password to secure your database and FTP accounts
7. Utilize the firewall or some security solutions

More Forward To Setting Permissions

While building a site, the primary concern is to give a smooth experience for the users and check website safety. Therefore, it is vital to set permissions to all your folders and files so that the users can easily use the site. But there are certain things to jot down while you set the permissions, such as:

1. Make sure that the website users can upload only images files, but not the executables like .php, .aspx, etc.
2. Further, ensure that no user can modify the ‘.htaccess file.’
3. It is crucial to understand that even though there are many extensions available, you only have to go with the popular one. It is because such extensions get updated quickly and safely. It reduces the vulnerability of hacks. It is one of the significant steps in fixing your hacked Joomla site.

Make a Backup

During the attack, the hacker injects the spam into your site. So it is always recommended that you do a fresh installation. Therefore before doing the installation, ensure that you keep a backup of your files.

Therefore Check Github, where all the Joomla files are available publicly. Use these files to compare them with the existing ones to check the modifications in the data. In addition, you can use SSh commands to check the core integrity of the data.

Moreover, having a backup of files helps you save the data, so you don’t have to worry about data loss during fresh installation.

Logs checking

Logs present in the system give a bright outlook of the attack or about the hack. The log records the activities that are happening on the site. With the help of XSS or SQL injection, the records can be available.

Moreover, most of the time, the hacker creates a new admin account, so if you want to check any suspicious users, you can follow the below steps.

1.   First of all, log in to the Joomla dashboard and click on Manage under the user’s menu.
2.   There you can check if there are any suspicious users. Go to the user manage option, and review for the users, primarily some recently registered users.
3.   If you find any suspicious users, remove them immediately.
4.   You can also check the last visit date of the suspected user.
5.   Note down the location of the server log and check the logs so that you can identify the XSS, SQL injection, etc.
6.   Remove the users with the help of unknown IPs for logging. You can also use a Google diagnostic report to find this cause. If the site is blocked, you can work with Google to remove your site from blocked names.
7. After you have followed all the steps, you successfully solved the hacking problem of your Joomla site.

Conclusion

The first thing you need to ask yourself is, is my site hacked? If you find that someone is accessing your website, then your need to move forward to how to fix your hacked Joomla site. These were some of the vital steps to learn so that you can set up your hacked website ASAP!