How to Fix and Prevent WordPress Malicious Redirect?

Introduction 

Does your website attack with the WordPress malicious redirect? You must be seeking a solution to overcome this. The malicious redirect is somehow the most dangerous hack a website can ever have. Such hacks mostly ruin almost part of your website along with putting it on suspension by the search engines. You never know this hack can cause a higher risk of your website losing potential clients and falling traffic. 

But we have got something for you that will help you easily tackle this error on your website. This blog will tell you the right aspects of how you can simply remove this brutal hack from your website. Also, you will know some important details about it. 

What is WordPress Malicious Redirect? 

In simple terms, a malicious redirect is an attack when malicious code is injected into your website. When this code enters your website, users are eventually redirected to a spammy link irrelevant to your website. The redirect takes users to mostly grey markets with pharmaceutical products or illegal services. 

The hack eventually impacts millions of websites, lowering their performance too. Eventually, websites lose their revenue, branding, SEO ranking, and more factors. It gets worse steadily if not tackled or caught at the right time. It starts spreading throughout your website files and folders along with the database. It starts creating replicas and affecting others with your website. 

This hack becomes a door to several hackers gaining access to your website. And the reason behind this is the nulled WordPress themes or plugins. Or sometimes, they just play the guesswork game to crack your website password. 

How do the WordPress Malicious Redirect Impact Your Website?

The Malicious Redirects hack has so many impacts on your website that you must know about. Here are some of them: 

• Once your site is hacked with malicious content by hackers, they easily gain access to all the files and folders on your website. This means your visitors will reach another website when they tap on the page having malicious code. 
• But it happens in some cases that visitors will not experience the WordPress redirect feature that takes them to the spammy link. This is done by the hackers so that you can’t catch any sort of redirect on their website. 
• Eventually, spammy websites or pages are owned by hackers, and they have built a dupe to redirect users to buying illegal products. Or they trick you into adding personal details and misuse them.
• Not only this, but some visitors are smart enough to immediately leave those spammy websites or think before entering any personal details. Also, they will hurt your website and may never visit it. Such exploited visitors may also claim your website as fraudulent on social groups and platforms. You know how stressful it becomes when you get a bad reputation on social media and online groups. This highly impacts the website traffic, as new visitors will already get negative reports about your website.
• Soon this can spread to search engines, and they will notice a higher drop in traffic, and eventually your rankings may be affected. Search engines will eventually penalize your website and stop users from using it. And lastly, your website will be suspended when it has some malware defection. 
• Moreover, the malicious redirect will give access to confidential details of yours to the hackers. Hackers having access to your sensitive details can sell it to competitors for fewer bucks. 

Identifying the WordPress Malicious Redirect Hack? 

The visitors easily identify this WordPress hacked redirect as they are taken to the spammy links. But this is not just the only symptom that your WordPress site hacked. There are some more symptoms you can identify. 

• Users may find your website malicious url on search engines, and when they seem to visit, they will be taken to the spam website. 
• A lot of times, “push notifications” or CAPTCHA may occur on your website. But when verified, it will take you to the spammy websites. 
• Also, there may be bit.ly links appearing on your website pages and posts, causing redirections. 
• You might see unknown files or folders with suspicious names appearing on your website’s server. 
• At times, you might be surprised, as many of the posts and pages may be published without your knowledge. And when trying to open them, you will be taken to the suspicious websites.

Variations in WordPress Malicious Redirect Hack

The Malicious Redirect hack comes with certain variations that are based on how it redirects users to spammy websites. So, here are some of the Malicious Redirect Hack variations: 

1. Push Notifications Redirection Hack : This type of redirection hack has a push notification feature that takes users to adult websites. 

2. Device-Specific Redirection Hack : The Device-Specific Redirection hack only attacks those users using your website on desktops and mobiles. 

3. Location-Specific Redirection Hack: This type of hack only attacks visitors from a particular location who are redirected to this hack. 

4. Search Result Redirection Hack: This type of redirection occurs when a visitor searches for your website on the search engines and reaches somewhere else. 

How to Fix WordPress Malicious Redirect? 

Finally, we have reached the stage where you need to know how to tackle Malicious Redirect on your website. Here are some of the fixes that will help you come out of this tragic attack. 

1. Scan Your Website 

Before getting into any fix, you need to scan your website so that you can identify the malware files or the folders. This can be done manually or by using a scanning plugin. We will see both methods, as manual scanning is for the developers and the plugin can be used by non-professionals. 

Method 1: Manually Scanning the Website 

This is the manual procedure where you need to have technical skills to scan your website. Firstly, you need to access the public_html at the backend of your website to check all the files and folders are well.

Secondly, you need to check the difference between the clean code and the malicious code. Well, hackers are smart enough and will try to hide the difference between clean and malicious code. However, this can be a tricky task even for the experienced developers. Hackers smartly manage to add malicious code that isn’t visible to the naked eye for a developer. And most of the time, while scanning the code, you might end up deleting the wrong code snippet. So, the best way to scan your website is by using the security plugin, which will do it in the best way. 

Method 2: Scanning Your Website Using a Security Plugin 

For scanning your website for WordPress malicious redirect, we recommend not using the scanning plugin but the security plugin. This is because the scanning plugins only scan your website, whereas the security plugin not only scans but also helps in identifying the website redirect malware. 

While there are several best WordPress security plugins in the WordPress directory, you just need to pick one and get it installed and activated on your website. 

Here we are heading with the Malcare plugin giving the best security features. When using MalCare, you need to first access their external dashboard and then add your website to it before any proceedings. 

Once the scanning is over, Malcare immediately starts cleaning it. At the same time, most of the security plugins wait for the experts to access your website and start cleaning. But MalCare cleans your website faster than ever. 

2. Clean Malware Infection 

The plugin has encountered malware-injected files after scanning your website. What next? They simply reach the experts to raise a ticket to clean your website or simply by tapping the Clean Site button. 

Then it is required to wait for 24 hours by giving access to your website so that the malware removal team can clean it. 

Avoiding complicated malware cleaning procedures, MalCare simply allows this by tapping its Auto Clean button. This will first ask for access to your FTP credentials, allowing the automated system to clean your website. You simply need to wait for a few minutes until your website is cleaned. 

3. Remove Suspicious Users, Themes, and Plugins.

Once your website is easily accessed by hackers, they simply infect your files and folders along with adding spam users, nulled themes, and plugins. 

Once your website is cleaned, they use software to access your website. You need to then analyze all the themes, plugins, and users. Simply remove any of them if you find something fishy around. 

4. Update the Credentials, Plugins, and Themes. 

After you have removed the WordPress malicious redirect from your website, you need to remove the original cause of the attack. We have already discussed that outdated or nulled content can cause such errors to happen or can be a door to hackers. You simply need to update the outdated content, including themes, plugins, or users. Also, you need to update the login credentials by adding stronger ones.

It is highly recommended to use themes and plugins from reputable providers such as VW Themes, ThemeForest, Divi, or Astra. These providers offer secure, premium WordPress themes and plugins that ensure the safety and reliability of your site.

Tips to Avoid Any Hacks in the Future

This is the list of the most important tips that will help you avoid more hacks like redirects in the future: 

• Make sure your website themes, plugins, and other content are updated regularly. 
• Do not make use of the nulled themes and plugins at any cost. 
• The user roles are set correctly, avoiding access to any random visitors. 
• Make sure your website has firewall installation to avoid any suspicious visitors accessing your website.
• Your WordPress hosting must be qualified, creating a good foundation for your website. 
• Implement security rules like creating a super strong password, allowing two-factor authentication, limiting login attempts, and logging out inactive users. 

Conclusion 

You can see how the WordPress Malicious Redirect can harm your website in multiple ways. There can be so many causes of this hack causing a major downfall to your website. It can be the nulled themes, plugins, or user roles that infect your website by giving access to hackers. But not to worry, as everything has an end, and this hack can be tackled when you put on the right measures for it. 

In this blog, we have pulled in some most acknowledgeable aspects you need to know about the hack on your website. How does it affect your website, variations in redirections, and fixing the hack on your website? We have made a complete guide that will help you come across this hack. Also, you can see there are some vital tips you need to note down to avoid such vulnerabilities on your website. 

To enhance your website’s security and performance, consider using a reliable WP theme bundle. A high-quality theme bundle often includes themes that are specifically designed with built-in security features, such as robust coding practices, frequent updates, and compatibility with the latest WordPress versions. These themes are frequently updated to address security vulnerabilities and improve performance. Additionally, theme bundles usually come with support for various essential plugins that can further enhance your website’s security and functionality. By investing in a trusted theme bundle, you ensure that your site is equipped with the latest security measures and performance optimizations, which can help prevent hacks and improve overall site reliability.