There are many blogs and websites that are being hacked and infected by Malware each day. The hacker embeds malicious code and links to websites that are deemed as bad neighbors or malicious. The hacker will use the attribute display=none so that the site owner and visitors can’t see the anchor text and or links to these malicious sites.

The danger of not knowing what is embedded in your site can make your website unsafe site by Google. Although you can’t see the code, Google can still crawl your site and index those links that are found in your source code.

How to check if you have malicious content on your website?

I was recently hacked not once, but twice and unfortunately I was unaware of the embedded code left by the hacker for more than 2 months. In order to find this malicious code you will have to view the source code in your browser. If you’re using Firefox, go to View/Page Source. Check to see if there are any random links going to various sites that are usually related to drugs, gambling, porn, etc. These links are usually at the open <body> and closed </body> tags of the main index page.

How to Remove Malicious Links

If you have a self hosted WordPress blog, upload the core installation files which will over-write the existing files that currently reside on your server. After the new files have been uploaded, check your source code on your index page and see if the malicious links are gone. If you’re using Firefox, go to View/Page Source.

You should also do the following:

  • Change your WordPress admin password (Use no less than 8 characters with at least one number, one uppercase character and a special character)
  • Change your FTP password
  • Check your .htaccess file/s for any malicious content and set the file permission (chmod) to read only

How to check if your website is safe with Google

You can view the Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Report for your site at:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=yoursite.com

Replace yoursite.com with the name of your site.

The Google Safe Browsing Tool will show you what pages are infected, but it will not give you details on what type of Malware.

You can also check your website for Malware by using the Norton Safe Web Tool by visiting http://safeweb.norton.com/. This tool is very useful, because if it finds Malware on your website, it will report the type of Malware and the specific files that are infected.