If you’re managing a WordPress site, it’s crucial to ensure it runs smoothly and securely. Many site owners worry that WordPress maintenance is a complex chore that requires a ton of technical expertise, but that’s not entirely true. This guide is here to show you the steps you can take on your own to help maintain your WordPress site and keep it running at its best.
Think of your WordPress site like a car. Just as your vehicle needs regular oil changes, tire rotations, and inspections to avoid breakdowns, your website needs regular “check-ups” or maintenance to prevent security breaches or degraded performance and other common website issues. By taking a proactive approach to maintenance, you can catch small problems before they turn into bigger ones — and save yourself a mountain of time and stress in the long run.
This guide is designed to be straightforward and easy to follow. We’ll walk through each manual maintenance task step by step, so you’ll have the knowledge and tools you need to keep your site in top shape. Whether you’re looking to enhance security, improve performance, or just ensure that your site remains up to date, you’re in the right place.
Let’s dive in!
Understanding WordPress Maintenance
WordPress maintenance involves a series of tasks aimed at keeping your site secure, up-to-date, and running optimally. This includes updating core software, themes, and plugins, securing the site from potential threats, and ensuring that the site’s content and structure are optimized for both users and search engines.
The consequences of overlooking these tasks can be significant, from decreased user engagement to increased vulnerability to attacks and website malware infections.
WordPress Maintenance: A Step-by-Step Guide
Maintaining your WordPress site manually not only enhances your understanding of its inner workings but also puts you in direct control of its security and performance.
Here are twenty two steps you can take to maintain your WordPress website.
1. Update WordPress core, themes, and plugins
We put this one first because it’s incredibly important: Regularly update your WordPress core, themes, and plugins.
Updates often address security vulnerabilities, introduce new features, and improve existing functionalities. We like to underscore security vulnerabilities, as attackers often exploit these to gain unauthorized access to websites with vulnerable code.
You can use your WordPress dashboard to check for available updates. It will notify you when updates are pending for the core, themes, or plugins.
Always backup your site before proceeding with updates to avoid data loss in case something goes wrong. You could also consider updating in a staging environment first if possible, which allows you to check for compatibility issues without affecting your live site.
After updating, thoroughly test your site to ensure everything works as expected. Pay special attention to critical functionalities such as forms, ecommerce checkouts, and user registration processes. If you encounter issues, you can revert to the previous version using your backup and investigate further.
2. Audit user roles and permissions
Reviewing user roles and permissions is key to maintaining the security of your WordPress site. Start by listing all users and their access levels. Evaluate whether each user still requires access and employ the Principle of least Privilege to help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive areas of your site.
Adjust permissions and roles where necessary. Remove users who no longer need access, and downgrade permissions that are unnecessarily high. WordPress provides several predefined roles such as Administrator, Editor, and Subscriber, each with specific capabilities.
Regularly auditing user access helps prevent security breaches. As part of your audit, also ensure that all users have strong passwords and consider implementing two-factor authentication for enhanced security.
Restricted user access on your website can help reduce the risk of broken access control and prevent malicious behavior.
3. Implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A web application firewall protects your site by monitoring and filtering incoming traffic. It helps defend against common threats like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
Choose a reputable WAF provider like Sucuri and configure the firewall according to your site’s needs.
Setting up the Sucuri firewall only takes a few minutes and can help block bad bots and virtually patch your site against known vulnerabilities.
Most importantly, you’ll be able to monitor your firewall reports and website logs to understand the threats being blocked and to fine-tune settings to meet your needs.
4. Backup your WordPress files and database
Regular backups are your safety net against data loss. You can back up both your WordPress files and database manually by accessing your hosting control panel or using FTP for files and phpMyAdmin for the database. Store these backups in a secure, off-site location to protect them from server failures.
Establish a routine backup schedule depending on your site’s activity level. For dynamic sites, consider daily backups, while less frequently updated sites might require only weekly backups. Ensure each backup is complete and usable by occasionally performing restoration tests.
5. Optimize your database
Optimizing your WordPress database improves performance and efficiency, especially if you have a really big website with many pages and years of content.
Over time, databases can accumulate deleted data, post revisions, and transient options, which can theoretically slow down your site. You can access tools like phpMyAdmin to optimize tables and clear out unnecessary data.
Regular cleanup tasks should include deleting spam comments, removing old post revisions, and clearing transient options. These actions help reduce database size and improve response times. Consider using SQL queries or dedicated plugins for more complex operations, always ensuring to back up your database first.
Monitor your database’s performance periodically to identify new opportunities for optimization. Keeping your database lean not only enhances performance but also reduces resource usage on your hosting server.
6. Check and update your WordPress security keys
Security keys add an extra layer of encryption to the data WordPress stores in users’ cookies. Changing these keys effectively logs out all currently logged-in users, which can be a useful response to a security breach or as a periodic security refresh.
To update your security keys, you’ll need to edit your wp-config.php file. You can generate new security keys using the WordPress Security Key Generator and replace the old keys in the wp-config.php file with the new ones. We’ve got complete instructions in our blog post about how to update your WordPress keys and salts.
Regularly updating your security keys is a simple yet effective security practice. Consider changing them every few months or following any security incident to ensure your site’s authentication tokens are refreshed.
7. Scan for malware
Regular scanning for malware and vulnerabilities helps catch threats early before they cause real damage to your site. Use reputable WordPress security plugins or website monitoring services to perform thorough scans of your website files and servers. These tools can detect hidden malware, security weaknesses, and outdated software components.
Review the scan reports carefully and address any issues immediately. Some plugins offer automated fixes, but manual intervention may be required for complex threats. Always ensure your scanning tools are updated to detect the latest security threats.
Implement website scanning as part of your regular maintenance schedule. Frequent scans increase your chances of detecting and mitigating threats early before they impact your visitors.
Sucuri has an entire malware research team devoted to updating our and maintaining our scanners so that we are able to help quickly detect and mitigate threats on your site. You can chat with our experienced analysts to learn more!
8. Enhance your .htaccess file
The .htaccess file is a powerful configuration file used by Apache web servers. It allows you to implement security measures such as preventing directory browsing, restricting access to specific IP addresses, and rewriting URLs to enhance SEO and user experience.
To update .htaccess, access it via FTP or your hosting file manager. Make changes carefully — incorrect configurations can make your site inaccessible. Always back up the existing .htaccess file before making modifications.
Regularly review and update your .htaccess file as part of your security strategy. Changes can include tightening server security settings, redirecting traffic, or customizing how visitors interact with your site. This control can significantly enhance your site’s security and efficiency.
9. Delete unused themes and plugins
Use it or lose it — it’s serious business! Unused themes and plugins can pose security risks if not regularly updated. They can also clutter your WordPress installation, leading to unnecessary complexity and potential performance issues.
Regularly audit your themes and plugins
Remove plugins and themes that are no longer in use or needed. This not only simplifies your site’s structure but also reduces the number of updates you need to manage and the potential attack vectors for hackers.
After removal, check your site for functionality to ensure that no essential features were dependent on the deleted themes or plugins. This step is really important to maintain the integrity and smooth operation of your site.
10. Optimize images and media files
Large images and media files can slow down your website, affecting user experience and SEO. Manually optimize these files by resizing, cropping, and compressing them before uploading to your site. Tools like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, or online compressors can help reduce file size without significant quality loss.
Consider implementing lazy loading for images and videos. This technique loads media files only as they enter the viewport (the part of the webpage visible to the user), which can significantly improve initial page load times.
Regularly review your media library and remove outdated or unused files. This practice keeps your media storage manageable and your site’s load time fast, ensuring a better experience for your users.
11. Check for broken links
Broken links can negatively impact your site’s SEO and user experience. This can lead to poor user engagement and can harm your site’s hard-earned rankings.
You can use free tools like Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools or even manual methods to scan your site for broken or dead links.
Fixing broken links
Fix broken links by updating the URL or removing the link altogether. If a linked page no longer exists, consider redirecting it to a relevant active page to preserve the user experience and SEO benefits.
Regularly checking for broken links should be part of your WordPress maintenance routine. Keeping your links updated ensures that your site remains accessible and user-friendly, which is essential for retaining visitors and maintaining rankings.
12. Verify mobile responsiveness
Given the high volume of mobile users, you’ll want to take some steps to ensure your website is mobile-responsive. Regularly test how your site displays and functions on various mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. You can use free tools like Google’s Lighthouse reports or Chrome devtools to identify issues that might affect usability on mobile platforms.
Check elements such as button sizes, text readability, and navigation ease. Make sure all features are easily accessible and functional on smaller screens. Adjustments might include increasing tap targets, optimizing images for faster loading, and ensuring forms are easy to complete on all devices.
Consistently updating the responsiveness of your site enhances user experience and supports SEO efforts. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in search results, so maintaining mobile compatibility is essential for your site’s visibility and user engagement.
13. Check for cross-browser compatibility
Different browsers can sometimes display the same web content in varied ways. Regular testing on multiple browsers (like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge) ensures that your site provides a consistent experience across all platforms.
You can use tools like BrowserStack to simulate how your site looks and functions on different browsers and operating systems.
Pay special attention to layout issues, interactive scripts, and general functionality. Fix any discrepancies to ensure that all users, regardless of their browser choice, have a seamless experience. This task will help support anyone in your audience who might use less common browsers.
Regular cross-browser testing keeps your site accessible and functional for all users, reducing bounce rates and improving overall satisfaction.
14. Update privacy policies and legal notices
Privacy policies and other legal notices must reflect the latest laws and regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA. While this step may not be applicable to small sites with a simple blog (do your own due diligence!), you’ll want to regularly review and update your site’s documents to ensure compliance and protect both your business or service and your users’ rights.
Consult with legal professionals if necessary to keep your policies up-to-date. This ensures that your site does not inadvertently expose you or your users to legal risks. Changes in legislation, especially in different regions, may require adjustments to your site’s legal notices.
Clearly display updated documents on your site, making them easily accessible to all users. This transparency builds trust with your visitors and demonstrates a commitment to protecting their personal information.
15. Conduct regular SEO reviews
SEO practices evolve as search engines update their algorithms. Regularly review and update your SEO tactics to ensure your site remains competitive in search rankings. Check on-page elements like meta descriptions, title tags, and content quality.
You can use free tools like Google Search Console to monitor your site’s performance in search results. This can also be useful for catching any security issues on your site that Google may have found – so be sure to check the security reports and warnings, as well!
16. Monitor website and server logs
Your logs are vital for understanding the security events and traffic patterns on your site. Regularly review them to detect unusual activities that could indicate security threats or indicators of compromise, which can help you respond quickly to potential patterns.
Analyze logs for patterns such as repeated failed login attempts, unexpected file changes, or unusual admin activities. Tools and plugins can help aggregate and visualize log data, but manual review is crucial for context and deeper analysis.
Quick response to the insights found in your website and server logs can help prevent breaches and minimize damage from attacks.
17. Update and test for the latest WordPress PHP version
Running your WordPress site on a supported, up-to-date PHP version is really important for both security and performance. Check the current PHP version your site is using and compare it with the latest PHP versions supported by WordPress.
Before updating PHP, ensure compatibility with your site’s themes and plugins. Testing on a staging environment is advisable to prevent issues on your live site. After updating, perform thorough testing to confirm everything functions correctly.
Regular PHP updates contribute to the overall health and speed of your site, while also securing it against vulnerabilities found in older versions.
18. Optimize your .htaccess File
The .htaccess file is a powerful tool for managing your website’s server configurations. It allows you to set up redirects, configure URL rewriting, and apply various security measures such as preventing directory browsing and protecting sensitive files.
Regularly reviewing and optimizing your .htaccess file ensures that your website adheres to best practices for security and efficiency. For instance, you can compress content, set cache-control headers, and restrict access to certain areas of your site. These measures not only boost security but also enhance the loading speed of your pages.
Make changes with caution, as incorrect entries can render your site inaccessible. Always backup the current .htaccess file before making modifications. Testing changes in a staging environment before applying them to your live site is also advisable to prevent downtime.
19. Implement a Content Security Policy (CSP)
A Content Security Policy (CSP) is critical for protecting your website against cross-site scripting (XSS) and data injection attacks. CSP works by specifying which domains the browser should consider valid sources of executable scripts. A properly defined CSP can effectively prevent many types of attacks, including XSS, clickjacking, and other code injection attacks.
To set up a CSP, define the appropriate directives that match your website’s needs. For example, specify sources for scripts, styles, images, and fonts. Tools like CSP Evaluator or CSP Tester can help you easily set up and optimize your CSP settings.
20. Regularly audit your plugins and themes
Remove or replace outdated or unsupported plugins and themes – deprecated plugins may compromise your site’s security if they contain vulnerabilities. This not only reduces potential attack vectors but also improves site performance by eliminating unnecessary code and functions.
21. Optimize for website accessibility
Ensuring your website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, is not only a legal requirement in many areas but also a best practice for inclusive design. You can use tools like WAVE or the axe DevTools browser extension to scan your site for accessibility issues.
Check for adequate color contrasts, use of alt texts for images, and ensure all forms and site navigation can be accessed and used with a keyboard alone. Make adjustments as necessary to comply with WCAG guidelines.
Regular reviews and updates to your accessibility features is a win-win: a commitment to accessibility can enhance user experience and broaden your audience, while improving your site’s reputation and user engagement!
22. Check API integrations and external connections
APIs and external connections are integral to the functionality of many websites, enabling features like social media sharing, payment processing, and data integrations. But you’ll want to periodically review any site integrations to ensure they function correctly (and securely).
To begin, check for any updates or changes in API policies and update your site’s integration settings accordingly. Also, review security logs to identify any potential unauthorized attempts to access these APIs.
Getting help with WordPress maintenance and support
To ensure the continued health and security of your WordPress site, regular maintenance is not just recommended; it’s essential.
The tasks we’ve discussed — from updating and auditing your WordPress core, plugins, and themes, to implementing a Content Security Policy and setting up a web application firewall — cover a comprehensive approach to maintaining your site. Each task plays an important role to ensure a secure and seamless experience for all of your website visitors.
While manual maintenance is achievable, it can sometimes be overwhelming given the complexity and technical nature of some tasks.
If you ever find yourself in need of assistance setting up a firewall or scanning for malware, Sucuri is here to help. Our team of experienced security professionals are equipped to support you in protecting your site against threats and website malware infections.
Reach out — we’d love to chat about how we can better secure your WordPress website!
Sucuri Malware Research Team
Marc Kranat
Krasimir Konov![Malware comes in many different varieties. Analyst Krasimir Konov is on this month’s Sucuri Sit-Down to help keep them all straight. From malicious iframes to SEO spam, join host Justin Channell as he racks Krasimir’s brain on all the different types of malware. Also, Krasimir discusses his recent blog post about a malicious cURL downloader, and Justin breaks down the latest website security news, including patched plugins you should update. Podcast Transcript Justin Channell: Hello, and welcome to the Sucuri Sit Down. I'm your host, Justin Channell, and this is a monthly podcast about website security, where we get in-depth with the malware removal experts here at Sucuri. Later in the show, I'll have our analyst Krasimir Konov to chat about some different types of malware, but first, let's take a look at other topics we've published on our blog and Sucuri labs notes this month. First up, we have some new information about credit card skimming with hackers using a hybrid method to steal payment information from eCommerce websites. Our analyst Dennis Sinegubko wrote about this for the Sucuri blog back at the beginning of June. Now, most credit card stealing malware is a client side JavaScript that grabs data and sends it to a third party server. But, that approach has a drawback for bad actors because it's still possible to track the requests and catch them as being suspicious. Now, to get around that, bad actors have started harvesting information server side by modifying core PHP files. In this case, the infection would be undetectable from the outside, but it's still going to be pretty easy to find because you're rarely modifying any of those core files, so any of those changes that are going to come up are going to be suspicious. To get around both of these drawbacks, we're seeing bad actors combine the two. So client side snippets of JavaScript are sending stolen credit card data to server side scripts that they've installed on the same server as the site. Now, this allows bad actors to cover their tracks a little bit because the traffic that's being redirected is going to the same server, and that's less likely to be flagged as suspicious. It's a bit more complicated to pull this off, but our team has been seeing this hybrid approach in the wild, so it's something to be on the lookout for. Now, another month has passed, and we found more cross site scripting attacks targeting WordPress plugins. Most notably, we discovered one that affects users of the YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter plugin. Now, this is a plugin that allows WooCommerce stores to be filtered by product type, and it's pretty popular. It's got about 100,000 users right now, so with it being vulnerable, it's very important that all of them update to the latest version, which is 3.11.1. Some of the other plugins we found cross site scripting vulnerabilities with included Elementor Page Builder, Careerfy, JobSearch, and Newspaper. If you're looking for a full list of vulnerabilities that have been patched this month, John Castro at the Sucuri Labs blog has you covered. Check out our show notes for the link. Also, this month I had a blog go up detailing what's called a jibberish hack. It's basically the same motivation as an SEO spam attack where bad actors use your site's good standing to redirect visitors to their own sites. But in this attack, you'll find a bunch of randomly named folders filled with a ton of HTML files with really nonsensical file names like cheap-cool-hairstyles-photos.html. It's just going to be a mishmash of keywords that clearly you didn't put there. Unfortunately, just deleting all those HTML files and folders is not going to be enough to get rid of that jibberish hack though. You're going to need to fully clean any hacked files and database tables, and then you're going to have to deal with all the damage caused to your site's standing. And just keep in mind, if you find anything about that process too daunting, we're always here to help. Now, for this month's Sit Down, we have Sucuri analyst Krasimir Konov. Earlier in June, he had written a lab's note about a malicious downloader script that used the curl function, and we chatted a bit about it, but more importantly, we went really in-depth on all the different varieties of malware that website owners need to be aware of. But, before I get started with Krasimir, I just wanted to remind you about the Sucuri Sync-Up, our sister podcast. It's a weekly website security news briefing that you can find anywhere you get your podcasts, as well as the video version on our social media feed, and now you can even get it on your Amazon Alexa smart speakers. Just search Amazon skills for Sucuri Sync-Up, add the flash briefing, and get new content delivered every Monday. Now, on with the show. Hi Krasimir, thanks for joining us on the show. I thought we could start off and maybe have you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at Sucuri? Krasimir Konov: Yeah, sure. Well, I joined Sucuri originally in 2014, but I've been in the IT business for about 10 years. Nine of those I did security. And currently at Sucuri I'm one of the malware analysts. I used to work in the front lines, used to clean websites and whatnot, and then I gradually moved up, and now I'm working in the malware research department. And my day to day job is basically analyzing malware, and then once I analyze it and figure out what it is, then I will create a signature for it. And we'll add those signatures to our tools, so we can automate some of the work we do. And I also write some Labs Notes blog posts. Usually, if I find something interesting in malware or some security topic, I'll write about it. Justin Channell: Yeah. And of those topics recently that you wrote about, one was about a malicious curl downloader, and how exactly did that work? Krasimir Konov: Right, yeah. That was an interesting one, but not very unique or anything like that. We see that a lot with curl being used as a downloader. It's a very common malware. So rather than including the actual malware in the file, the attackers would use curl to download the malicious code. In this case, they'll download it from Pastebin, but it could be anything. It could be another website or anything like that, and curl would just make a call to the website, request the code. The website will respond with the code, and then later on, there is some code to either save the output somewhere on the website, or you'll just run it through eval and execute the actual code right away. Justin Channell: Right. And you said that it's commonly found in malware, but let's kind of maybe talk a bit broader about malware in general. What is everything that is classified as malware? Krasimir Konov: Well, in general it will be anything that the owner of the website didn't authorize, anything that was added by a third party. There is a lot of different malware. It could be even something like a defacement that will also be considered malware because it was something the user did not authorize. Even though it might not be doing anything malicious on the website, it's not infecting users, the visit is still something they did not authorize. So defacement would also be considered malware. And even something like ransomware where the website is technically not really damaged, it's all encrypted, but it's not infecting anybody. It's not doing anything malicious, but it's still encrypting the entire website and asking the user or the customer, the owner of the website for a ransom they need to pay in order to get the website back online. Justin Channell: Okay. Let's maybe break it down to each individual type of malware. For example, what would be a way that maybe I-frames could be maliciously used by a hacker? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. An I-frame can be used maliciously when it loads content from another location. You can look at the I-frame as a window that just opens another website. So anything that website has on it, you're pretty much loading it through the I-frame. So if that website is infected and it's serving some kind of malware, by opening an I-frame, you're loading all those elements, everything that was on this website. And sometimes the I-frame can be as small as pixel or something hidden somewhere off the screen, so you wouldn't even know that it was opening it. Justin Channell: And yeah, I feel like we've also seen a lot of them where they're used almost to mimic popups as well. Krasimir Konov: Yeah. I mean the I-frame, it could just load from another website and the other website could do anything. It could be serving just malware and it would try to infect the user that doesn't even know that they're being connected to the other website. It could just have some other JavaScript that's just trying to open up pop ups on the original website through the I-frame. Yeah, it could be a lot of things. Justin Channell: Okay. And also, let's talk a little bit about conditional redirects and how those work. What allows a script to detect which devices are coming in and where they're coming from? Krasimir Konov: Right. Yeah. That's a common one we see a lot. Basically, a conditional redirect would be something, it's a redirect on the website. It's obviously malicious, but there's certain conditions that need to be met before the redirect is actually executed or the redirect happens. For example, let's say if it's on a phishing website or a phishing page that is hidden somewhere on the website. For example, if Google visits it, obviously the attacker doesn't want Google to see the actual phishing page and record it as a phishing page. So they'll look for, for example, the IP address. They would look for the user agent. And a lot of times they can tell that it's a bot. So they'll just return a 404 response, for example, that will be like, "Oh, page not found." So Google would be like, "Oh, it looks like this page doesn't exist." But then if a regular user goes to the same page, then those conditions will be met. The actual website or the script behind the phishing will check and see, and be like, "Oh, this one is running Firefox or Chrome," and be like, okay. And then they'll look at the IP and be like, "Oh, he's in whatever, he's in United States somewhere." And he's like, "Oh, okay. That's good." And then once all of these conditions are met, then the actual script will serve them the actual phishing page. And it'll be like, "Oh, you need to fill out this to recover your account or whatever, or type in your credentials to log in here." Justin Channell: And so this is the type of thing we're really, a website owner is going to run into this more commonly when people are complaining about they're getting served bad content or whatever, and they can't seem to replicate it. It's likely probably these kind of redirects. Is that right? Krasimir Konov: Right, right. It could be something as specific as, for example, a range of IP addresses that correspond to an ISP or maybe let's say a country. It could be like, "Oh, were targeting only customers in the US," so if you're connecting from another country and you go to the same website or the same page, it would just say 404. It will give you a page not found. But then if you actually have an IP address from the United States, you're connecting from the United States, then it will actually show you the phishing page. Justin Channell: Now another type of malware I feel like we see a lot here is SEO spam. We hear people talking about that. What are some of the top SEO spam keywords that you see coming through? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. We get that a lot. We see a lot of spam on websites. A lot of times attackers will use SEO spam to gain ranking for their own website. Or they'll just try to include some kind of SEO spam in links to another website that they're currently running or something. I mean, these things change all the time. So a website might be up for a week and then it'll disappear, and then they'll start another campaign. But yeah, we see that a lot. We see all kinds of keywords they use. Most common ones will be something like Viagra. We'll have like jerseys for sale. A lot of times, they'll use name brands like Nike, Rolex, Prada. We've seen even some essay writing services for some reason. I'm not sure why, but that's common. We see, for example, pharmaceuticals a lot that will use specific medicine names. They'll use all kinds of replicas, like a replica bag of this, replica this, replica that. We'd see prescription, also payday loans. And obviously there's some adult related sites and things like that keywords. Justin Channell: So pretty much anything that people are going to be searching and clicking on are probably going to be targets for SEO spam? Krasimir Konov: Right. I think a lot of it commonly is pharma related because a lot of people are looking to buy medicine online, and a lot of times will require a prescription. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, let me see if I can find this medicine that I can buy it online somewhere." They don't need a prescription. They don't want to pay to visit a doctor and whatnot, and they'll look for it. And yeah. Justin Channell: Now, whenever somebody's website does get hacked with a SEO spam attack, what kind of effect can it have on the website beyond just being defaced? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. You can have a lot of things can happen, negative things. For example, the website can be blacklisted because of the keywords. And that usually represents a big red warning when you go on the website, depending on who blacklisted it. But if it's Google, for example, you'll see a big warning and it'll tell you this website contains malware or there's something wrong with this website. So, pretty much all the traffic on the website will be gone. And then you can also lose a lot of your reputation if there is a SEO spam on the website. For example, if you were ranked in say number five for certain keywords that represent your product on Google search engines, and then suddenly you get hit with SEO spam, then all these search engines then go and visit the website. And all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, there's all these weird key words on here, all this SEO spam that's causing a lot of mixed signals." And the search engines are like, "Oh, where do we rank this website now? Do we rank them with this product that's originally what the website is about? Or do we take into consideration all these other keywords that are mixed up that are SEO spam?" So, all of a sudden your website might go from being ranked number five on the first page to being on the 10th page. And then you rank for all these other keywords that you didn't intend to. And then people search for something completely different. They're searching for jerseys or something, or now they're searching for Prada products, and then suddenly your website pops up in there. So you're not really getting any good traffic, not targeted traffic. But, yeah. Justin Channell: Okay. So in a lot of ways, the effects of SEO spam would kind of be the same for defacements or any kind of malware with the blacklisting, but it does bring that kind of unique part to it where then it can also then bring traffic that you weren't expecting from somebody searching for jerseys, for example. I had not really ever thought about that. Krasimir Konov: Right, right. Yeah. It will definitely bring some traffic. I've seen a lot of times where websites will be connected. Let's say, there was 1,000 websites that were all infected with SEO spam, and it will kind of link each other to try to bring each other up into the rankings. And so you would see a lot of strange traffic from some random websites that were, for example, that were previously infected, even if they might not be anymore. But yeah, they'll be sending traffic to you or there'll be usually search engines sending you traffic, but for the wrong keywords. People are looking for something else, so obviously they're not going to be interested in your website. They're not going to buy anything because they're not looking for that. Justin Channell: And now, so thinking of the way websites get infected, a very common way it seems to be is through phishing campaigns. What are some recommendations you have for the best ways to avoid becoming a phishing victim? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. There is some ways. I mean, it depends really on the type of attack. Obviously, a lot of people, when they think of phishing, they think, "Oh, it's just like a PayPal phishing page and it just looks like the original," but it could be more subtle. If it's just a regular page where you're just going and you get redirected to another website, obviously the first thing to look is if you have the security padlocks, make sure that traffic is encrypted. A lot of these websites don't really have any encryption nowadays. More are starting to get that with pre SSLs being issued and whatnot. But that's the first thing to look and see, make sure. Anywhere you're typing your sensitive information, you want to make sure you have the padlock to make sure everything is encrypted. Krasimir Konov: But also you want to look at the URL of the actual website you're visiting. A lot of times they'll try to hide it. So you might have to be careful and look closely. Something that might be an I will be an L or something like that. And a capital I and L might look kind of similar into your IRL, so you might miss something like that. Say, if you're looking for PayPal and it might replace the L with an I, and if you don't look closely, it might look exactly the same. And you're like, "Oh, okay, it's paypal.com," but not really. So yeah. Just pay attention to the URL, make sure it is the actual website. There's no paypal.com dot something, dot something else, dot com. Yeah. You want it to just say paypal.com, and then it'll have forward slash and something else. But yeah, it gets more complicated when you have, for example, a phishing page that's injected into a regular page. For example, you have a checkout page on a website that you're buying things from and you go through the checkout page and you're looking at where you type in your credit card information and whatnot. And you might have a phishing page that actually looks exactly like a little box that gives you where you put in your credit card number, or your name, your address, and all that. So that will be more subtle. For example, that could be also an I-frame that's just coming from another page. And it will look exactly like it's part of the website. You're on the legitimate website, but only that portion of the website is actually the phishing page. And you look at it and you're like, "Oh, okay. It looks fine. I'm just putting my credentials." So that one could be a lot harder to figure it out. Usually, if it's something like that, I look for something that looks kind of out of place. Maybe they didn't get the right font. It might not be the same as the original website or there might be something out of place, some fields that are missing or some fields that are squished into the left or the right. It looks kind of awkward. It's like, why would this be like this? The whole website looks professional. There's a pink background or something, for example, and then suddenly there's this white box in the middle. It's like, ah, it looks kind of weird, out of place. Justin Channell: So pretty much if anything looks slightly out of place, you really should double check everything at that point. Krasimir Konov: Right. Right. Yeah. Obviously there's more ways that you can check, but I wouldn't get into more technical, like inspecting elements and looking at stuff, but yeah. Justin Channell: And now another type of malware that's kind of, and it kind of plays in with whatever the other infection is, is backdoors. Can you give us some examples of what backdoors can be? It's mainly just when a hacker can get back into the site to reinfect it, but I know there are a ton of different methods. And what are some of the more common ones and then maybe some that really interesting that you've seen? Krasimir Konov: Yeah, there is a lot. They'll probably be one of the first things the hacker would do is if they compromise a website, obviously they'll try to spread backdoors and just inject code everywhere so they can get back in, even if the owner of the website or webmaster cleans it. They want to try and hide some malicious code somewhere so they can always get back in. There's many variations. A backdoor could be something as simple as a single line of code to just [inaudible 00:20:19] argument, some kind of string or something via get or post. Krasimir Konov: And then it runs into an eval, so it evaluates the code and executes it. And some backdoors are very complex and they can be included in, let's say you have a WordPress site and you have a specific login page where all the login credentials are being processed and everything else. They could even inject code into that to basically bypass the whole login mechanism so that they can just bypass everything. They don't even have to know any user. They don't have to know the password, nothing. They'll just include some lines in there, and every time they'll be just able to log in. Yeah. It gets pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of malware. There is always a malware, for example, that just targets credit cards and will just target the eCommerce websites. And they'll just try to steal the login credentials, I mean, the credit cards. They'll try to get your address, your credit card information, any kind of CVV code or whatever you typed into the billing address, everything. And then there's also malware like the backdoors that are just trying to keep the attacker in control and trying to get them back into the website. There's just so many variations of what a malicious user might want to do on a website. Some can be something as simple as just reinfecting the website. They don't want to keep control. They just want to keep reinfecting it with some kind of malware. So even if you clean it, it would just get reinfected. Some of them in the database, otherwise might be in the files. We've seen some added into a [inaudible 00:22:14] job that just keeps running on the server. There could be malware that is just a giant to, for example, attack out of websites. Like for example, a distributed denial service where they put the same malware on thousands of websites. And then they try to send traffic to one website to try to bring it down. Yeah. People try to do all kinds of stuff with websites. We've seen even some cryptocurrency mining malware that you go onto a website and suddenly your PC starts running like crazy. And you're like, what the hell is going on? Your fans turn on and the PC is 100% CPU. And it turns out that the website has some malware that's just by mining Bitcoins with your CPU and it's using all of it. Justin Channell: Wow. Okay. So one question now, the last question I have is of all the malware that you've seen, what do you think is the coolest piece of malware that you've ever seen? Krasimir Konov: I think the coolest would be the ones that are so subtle that you don't even know that it's there. For example, we've seen some that were pretty innovative. It will be just a one liner code that's just one line. And for example, it will be let's say 40-50 characters, something like that. And that's all it is. And they'll hide it somewhere in between the legitimate code. And if you don't know what you're looking for, you would never see it. It doesn't look suspicious. There is no links to some other website. There's no some kind of encrypted code or anything like that. It's just a simple one line. And then if you're just scrolling through the file looking for something, you would never see it. It just looks like all the other code. And then if you look closely, you're like, "Oh, there's this..." Look closely, and you're like, "Oh wow, this is not supposed to be there." And then you keep looking at it and you're like, "This looks really weird." And then you see that it's actually doing some malicious things and trying to evaluate some code or taking output from the outside, I mean, some input from outside, you can call it and give it code to run. Justin Channell: Well, Krasimir, thanks for coming on and talking to us for today. Krasimir Konov: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so happy. I'm glad I was able to do this podcast and I can't wait to do another one. Justin Channell: Yeah, we'll have you on again. Thanks. Krasimir Konov: Thank you. Justin Channell: Thanks again to Krasimir for joining us here on the Sit Down. We'll be back with another episode next month. So be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or any podcasting platform. Also, be sure to follow us on social media at Sucuri Security and check us out at sucuri.net. That's S-U-C-U-R-I.net. I'm Justin Channell, And this has been the Sucuri Sit Down. Stay safe out there.](https://blog.sucuri.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20-sucuri-podcast-blog-post_blog_image-390x183.jpg)
Justin Channell
Denis Sinegubko
Chase Watts
Art Martori