Repairing and securing hacked WordPress websites

Our LRob SARL was founded by Robin Labadie, a an active specialist in the French-speaking WordPress community for many years (See resume). Throughout our career, we have come across many WordPress sites that were not properly maintained, and we have always been able to fix them using a reliable and effective method developed through years of experience to thoroughly clean up and secure WordPress sites for the long term.

The reasons behind the hacking of your website are generally related to security vulnerabilities. The security vulnerabilities that may have allowed your website to be hacked will be listed in our incident report.

WordPress, as an interactive system, includes thousands of lines of code and numerous plugins, creating opportunities for security vulnerabilities. Every day, such vulnerabilities are discovered and corrected by developers.

Given that WordPress is widely used, it is often the under attack. Hackers test different vulnerabilities on various WordPress sites until we find a vulnerability.

Reasons for intrusion may include:

• Missing updates or the use of obsolete scripts. This can leave a loophole in an extension or theme that can allow a hacker to’inject malware in your site's files, often discreetly.
• Weak passwords for administrator, FTP and database accounts.
• Insufficiently secure hosting without adequate protection against attacks.

It's crucial to reinforce all aspects of security, including using secure hosting specially configured for WordPress, as well as regular maintenance, to prevent future intrusions. My offer Webmastering Critical is designed with this in mind.

Because he was vulnerable, you were an «easy» target.

Online attackers don't usually make distinctions: they attack all sites, including those of the self-employed, small businesses, small associations or local authorities. Truly targeted attacks are rare. That's why, if your site has security flaws, it's not a question of «if», but «when» your site will be hacked.

Whether your site is specifically targeted or not, it's essential to take all necessary measures to ensure complete security and prevent any recurrence.

No, that's not enough, nor is it recommended. It's necessary to carry out a complete audit of the site's files and database, and to identify other potential vulnerabilities and unauthorized users.

Because most hackers often leave backdoors in their code to maintain their access, and these are not erased by a simple hack. update.

So, to carry out the update, If you've gone through the hacked site's back-office, this can give the hacker access to your password, which you'll have to change wherever you use it.

If you have already applied updates after a breach, this may make it impossible to identify the vulnerability exploited by the hacker.

Security is a specialist field. When in doubt, call on your safety expert LRob.

WordPress is an attractive target for hackers due to its high popularity (43% of the websites) and the mass availability of information on security vulnerabilities.

Hackers' motivations are generally linked to illegal financial gain. They use various methods, such as data theft and resale, as well as phishing, to achieve this goal.

Your site can be repaired within 24 hours, including evenings, weekends and public holidays. Such a turnaround also requires your responsiveness.

Piracy is an emergency and your request is treated as a priority.

For best results, we recommend that you fill in the form and then call us.

For rapid intervention, you need to provide access to files and database then, as soon as you have confirmation that your site is repairable, place your order.

After a preliminary diagnosis by telephone or via the contact form and payment on your part, the repair begins.

To perform the repair, we just need access to the files and the database to your site. FTP and phpMyAdmin access are sufficient, but access to the hosting control panel or to a file and database archive of the site as-is is also acceptable. On a dedicated server, SSH access with sufficient permissions is recommended.

LRob hopes that you will not be charged any fees if, unfortunately, your website cannot be repaired.

The diagnosis prior to the order is designed to check the feasibility of the intervention.

However, if the repair process reveals that your site has been too severely compromised and your content is no longer available, LRob promises to refund you within 7 business days. You may also opt for a credit applied to the amount already paid for hosting, website design, or a website redesign, if you prefer.

A maintenance-free site starts to run a significant risk after 3 months without updates. In other words, after 3 months, what happens to your site is no longer related to the initial security.

If you opt for LRob hosting, you'll benefit from automatic updates and security alerts.
If you choose a webmastering plan, we’ll closely monitor your site’s security, and you’ll benefit from our «0 hack» guarantee: any hacking incidents on your hosted site will be resolved free of charge.

Usually just a few seconds.

Our work is designed to cause no significant disruption.

First, duplicating your site to our environment has no impact on your site. Next, the site is restored to production in a way that minimizes downtime. The first few seconds of downtime are due to renaming the folder containing the compromised site to a new folder containing the pre-sent, repaired site. Finally, importing the repaired database usually takes a few seconds, during which the site may be unresponsive; the duration of this step depends on the size of your site’s database and the performance of your hosting provider, if you have not chosen LRob.

If you've chosen LRob hosting, then migration to the new server won't cause any downtime thanks to perfect DNS control!