If your WordPress site goes offline, every minute costs you lost sales, missed leads, and a dent in visitor trust. Search engines may start flagging errors, and customers see a blank page instead of your business. In that moment, the pressure is real:
What broke, and how do you get back online before the damage adds up?
The good news is that most WordPress outages are fixable. In most cases, your site isn’t lost, it’s blocked by something like a plugin conflict, server hiccup, database error, expired domain, SSL problem, sudden traffic spike, or malware infection.
In this post, we’ll cover how to troubleshoot a down WordPress site, starting with the quick checks that rule out the obvious, then moving step by step through plugins, themes, server settings, security, and backups.
Why is my WordPress site down?
A WordPress site can go down for several common reasons:
- Plugin or theme conflicts after an update
- Server overload from high traffic, bots, or limited hosting resources
- Database connection errors caused by bad credentials or database failure
- Expired domain registration, DNS problems, or SSL certificate issues
- PHP memory exhaustion or incompatible PHP versions
- Malware, redirects, spam injections, or host suspension
- Broken core files after an incomplete update
Most of these problems can be reversed. The key is to stay calm, confirm how widespread the outage is, and work from the outside in, starting with what’s visible to visitors and moving inward to the technical details.
Phase 1: quick verification checks
Before editing files or disabling plugins, confirm that the site is actually down for everyone. Sometimes the problem is local: a browser cache issue, a DNS resolver problem, a firewall block, or a temporary connection failure from your network.
Begin with the checks that take seconds. These quick wins can save you from hours spent digging through server files or making changes that don’t address the real problem.
Is it down for everyone or just you?
Open a site availability checker like Down For Everyone Or Just Me and enter your domain. If the tool says the site is reachable, the problem may be limited to your browser, device, network, or location.
Next, try the site in an incognito/private window. Then clear your browser cache, test another browser, and check from your phone using mobile data instead of Wi-Fi. If the site loads from one connection but not another, you may be dealing with a local cache, DNS, or IP-blocking issue rather than a full outage.
Check your host’s status page
If the site is down globally, check your hosting provider’s status page before changing anything. Hosts occasionally experience outages, emergency maintenance, network problems, storage failures, or control panel disruptions.
Check for recent updates from your host’s status page, support portal, email, or social media. If the outage is on their end, the fastest path to recovery is often opening a support ticket and waiting for their fix, rather than making risky changes to your WordPress files.
Verify domain, DNS, and SSL
Connectivity problems can look exactly like WordPress problems, even when WordPress itself is fine.
First, confirm that your domain registration has not expired. You can check this through your registrar account or by running a WHOIS lookup. In the WHOIS record, look closely at the expiration date and domain status fields. If the expiration date has passed, the domain may stop resolving or display a registrar parking page instead of your site.
The domain status can also explain sudden downtime. Statuses like expired, redemptionPeriod, pendingDelete, or similar notices usually mean the domain has lapsed and may be in a recovery or deletion process. Statuses such as clientHold or serverHold can prevent the domain from resolving at all, which makes the website appear offline even if your hosting account is working normally. If you see one of these statuses, contact your registrar immediately to renew, recover, or remove the hold.
If you confirm your domain is active and in good standing, move on to checking your DNS. Start by confirming the domain’s nameservers, since they determine where the authoritative zone file lives. You can often verify the assigned nameservers in the same WHOIS lookup used to check the domain’s registration status. Make sure the nameservers match the DNS provider you expect.
Then check the domain’s A record (and/or CNAME) to confirm it resolves to the correct server IP address. If the nameservers point to the wrong provider, your A record changes may be made in the wrong DNS zone and never affect live traffic. If the A record points to an old server, incorrect IP, or does not resolve at all, visitors may see connection errors even though WordPress itself is intact.
If you recently migrated hosts, changed nameservers, updated A records, or moved through a CDN, DNS propagation can cause some visitors to reach the new server while others still hit the old one. This usually settles, but incorrect records can keep a site offline indefinitely.
Finally, review your SSL certificate. An expired or misconfigured certificate can trigger browser warnings that scare visitors away or block checkout pages.
In your hosting panel, CDN dashboard, or certificate manager, confirm that SSL is active, valid, and mapped to the right domain.
Look at traffic patterns
A sudden traffic spike can overwhelm a WordPress site, especially on shared hosting or underpowered VPS plans.
Open your host’s analytics panel, CDN dashboard, or server monitoring tool and look for unusual activity. A large spike could be good news, such as a viral post or successful campaign. It could also be a bot flood, brute-force attack, scraper surge, or DDoS attempt.
If you see a sharp traffic spike before the outage, focus on server resources, caching, rate limits, and firewall protection. Sometimes the problem is simply too many requests for your server to handle, whether from real visitors or automated bots.
Phase 2: fix plugin and theme conflicts
Outdated, incompatible, or poorly coded plugins and themes are among the most common causes of WordPress downtime. They often trigger the “White Screen of Death,” fatal errors, broken layouts, or the dreaded “There has been a critical error on this website” message.
If your site crashed right after an update, this is where to focus. Updates are a common trigger for plugin and theme conflicts.
Deactivate plugins methodically
If you can still access /wp-admin, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins. Select all plugins, choose Deactivate from the bulk actions menu, and apply the change.
Then reload the site.
If the site comes back online, one of the plugins is likely responsible. Reactivate plugins one at a time, checking the front end after each activation. When the site breaks again, the plugin you just reactivated is probably the culprit. Leave it disabled, roll it back, update it, replace it, or contact the developer.
If you cannot access wp-admin, use SFTP, FTP, or your host’s file manager:
- Open your WordPress installation directory.
- Go to
wp-content. - Rename the plugins folder to
plugins_old.
- Reload your site.
This forces WordPress to deactivate all plugins because it can no longer find the plugin directory. If the site loads, rename plugins_old back to plugins, then rename individual plugin folders one by one until you identify the problematic plugin.
This is a diagnostic step, not a permanent fix. Once you’ve found the problem plugin, restore the folder names and address that plugin directly by updating, replacing, or removing it.
Switch themes as a diagnostic step
Themes can also cause fatal errors, especially after PHP, WordPress core, or page builder updates.
If you can access the dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes and activate a default WordPress theme, such as Twenty Twenty-Five or another current default theme installed on your site.
If wp-admin is inaccessible, use SFTP or your host’s file manager. Navigate to wp-content/themes and rename the active theme’s folder (not the main “themes” folder). WordPress will try to fall back to an available default theme. If the site returns, the active theme is likely involved.
At that point, update the theme, check for errors in custom code, review any recent template changes, or reach out to the theme developer for support.
Phase 3: Resolve configuration and resource issues
If plugins and themes are not the cause, move deeper into WordPress configuration, database access, PHP resources, and rewrite rules.
These fixes are still within reach, but they touch critical files. Always download a backup of any file before you edit it, so you can roll back if something goes wrong.
Fix database connection errors
The message “Error establishing a database connection” usually means WordPress cannot talk to its database.
Open your wp-config.php file and check these values:
DB_NAMEDB_USERDB_PASSWORDDB_HOST
Compare them against the database details in your hosting control panel. A single wrong character in the database name, username, password, or host can break the connection.
This often happens after a migration, password reset, restore, or manual database change. If the credentials look correct but the error remains, ask your host whether the database server is online and whether your database user still has the right permissions.
You can also check whether the database itself is damaged or unavailable from the hosting panel.
Raise the PHP memory limit
A WordPress site can crash when a plugin, theme, import, page builder, or WooCommerce process uses more memory than PHP allows. You may see an error like:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size exhaustedTo raise the WordPress memory limit, open wp-config.php and add this line above the comment that says “That’s all, stop editing!”:
define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );Save the file and reload the site.
If the error persists, your host may enforce a lower server-level limit. In that case, raise PHP memory from the hosting panel or ask support to adjust it. Don’t just set memory limits sky-high. Memory exhaustion can signal a buggy plugin or even attack traffic, so it’s worth investigating what’s using up resources.
Update PHP versions
WordPress depends on PHP, and old PHP versions can cause compatibility, performance, and security problems. A site may break after WordPress core, plugin, or theme updates if the server is running an outdated PHP release.
Check your hosting panel for the PHP version assigned to the site. Use a currently supported PHP 8.x release recommended by WordPress and your host, and avoid legacy PHP versions that have reached end of life. You can review WordPress’s current server guidance on the official WordPress requirements page.
Before changing PHP versions on a live site, make a backup or use a staging environment if you have one. Upgrading PHP can expose outdated plugins or themes that haven’t kept up with recent releases.
Repair broken permalinks
If your homepage loads but posts, pages, or product URLs return 404 errors, your permalink rules may be broken.
Go to Settings > Permalinks in wp-admin and click Save Changes without changing anything. This flushes and regenerates WordPress rewrite rules.
On Apache servers, this also refreshes the .htaccess rules WordPress uses for clean URLs. If you just migrated or changed servers, try this fix early, as it often resolves broken links after a move.
Phase 4: address security breaches and malware
Sometimes a WordPress site goes down because it has been compromised.
Attackers may inject malicious PHP, add redirects, create spam pages, abuse server resources, modify core files, or install backdoors. In other cases, the hosting provider may suspend the account after detecting malware, phishing, spam, or outbound attacks.
Security-related downtime can be messy because the visible symptom is not always the root cause. A blank page, redirect loop, strange pop-up, blacklist warning, or host suspension notice may all point back to the same problem: unauthorized changes on the site.
Identifying and recovering from a hack
Start by scanning the public-facing site with a remote malware scanner such as Sucuri SiteCheck. A remote scanner can help identify known malware, blacklist warnings, injected spam, defacements, and suspicious redirects.
Keep in mind that remote scans cannot see every server-side file, so a clean scan does not always guarantee a clean site.
Next, open Google Search Console and review the Security Issues section. Google may flag hacked content, harmful downloads, phishing, or malware if it detects dangerous behavior on your site.
Then take immediate containment steps:
- Reset all WordPress admin passwords.
- Reset hosting, FTP/SFTP, database, and control panel passwords.
- Remove unknown admin users.
- Update WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
- Replace modified core files with clean copies.
- Review recently changed files for suspicious PHP.
- Check
.htaccess,wp-config.php,mu-plugins, uploads, and theme files for injected code.
If the infection is severe, don’t just delete the obvious malware and call it done. Attackers often leave hidden backdoors so they can get back in later. A thorough cleanup is essential.
A Web Application Firewall can help block malicious traffic before it reaches your site, and a professional incident response team can clean infected files, remove backdoors, and help request blacklist reviews after remediation.
Phase 5: restore from backup
If the site is badly broken and manual troubleshooting is taking too long, restoring from a clean backup may be the fastest path back online.
Choose a backup from before the downtime started. Restoring a backup from after the issue appeared may simply restore the same problem. If malware is involved, go back far enough to avoid restoring infected files.
Check whether you have backups from:
- Your hosting provider
- A backup plugin
- Off-site cloud storage
- A managed WordPress platform
- Manual server snapshots
If you do not have a backup system in place, contact your host immediately. Many providers keep daily or weekly backups even if you never configured your own. Ask what restore points are available and whether they can restore files, database tables, or the full account.
After restoring, update any vulnerable software, reset all passwords, and dig into what caused the outage in the first place. A backup gets you online, but it won’t fix the root cause if you don’t address it.
Long-term prevention habits that actually work
Once your site is stable, use the breathing room to put a prevention plan in place. Avoiding downtime is much easier than scrambling to fix it after the fact.
Focus on habits that reduce both breakage and compromise:
- Use a reputable security plugin and a website firewall to reduce malicious traffic, exploit attempts, and brute-force activity.
- Set up automated, off-site backups so you can restore even if the hosting account is damaged or suspended.
- Keep WordPress core, plugins, and themes updated, but test major updates on staging when possible.
- Remove abandoned plugins and themes instead of leaving unused code on the server.
- Use uptime monitoring so you receive alerts before customers, search engines, or payment processors notice the outage.
- Choose a reliable managed WordPress host with strong resource limits, backups, malware support, and responsive technical support.
- Keep admin access tight with strong passwords, two-factor authentication, and the fewest privileged users possible.
A healthy WordPress site is one that bounces back quickly because you’ve already put the right safeguards in place.
When to seek professional help
There’s a point where poking around does more harm than good.
Escalate the issue if you are seeing repeated database errors, unexplained file changes, persistent malware warnings, blacklist notices, strange redirects, or host suspension messages. Also get help if you are uncomfortable editing wp-config.php, renaming folders over SFTP, restoring databases, or reviewing server files.
For server outages, resource limits, DNS issues, and database availability, contact your hosting provider first. They can see logs and infrastructure details you cannot.
For malware, blacklisting, phishing warnings, or recurring infections, bring in a website security team. Sucuri’s hacked website repair and firewall services are designed for exactly these situations: clean the infection, close the door attackers used, and help keep the site protected after it comes back online.
Downtime happens. Preparation keeps it from becoming a crisis
A down WordPress site is stressful, but it usually follows a pattern. Verify whether the outage is real. Check the host, domain, DNS, and SSL. Rule out plugins and themes. Review database credentials, PHP memory, PHP versions, and permalinks. Then investigate security and restore from a clean backup if needed.
The biggest mistake is making random changes in a panic. Move through each layer methodically, keep calm, and document every change you make.
Once your site is back online, treat the outage as a lesson. It’s showing you exactly where you need stronger backups, better monitoring, safer update habits, more reliable hosting, or tighter security controls.
![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
Ben Martin
Luke Leal
Art Martori
Marc Kranat
Puja Srivastava
Northon Torga
Allison Bondi