Website Hack Recovery and Protection

After a cyber attack, your e-commerce site may stop loading—visitors see a Google Safe Browsing warning instead of your product catalog. In a day, traffic drops 90%, and customers call to complain about redirects to phishing sites. That happened to our client, an electronics store on WordPress + WooCommerce. The hackers exploited a vulnerable plugin, planted a webshell, and started sending spam from the server. We restored the site in 2 days, and Google lifted the warning in a week. Key lesson: don't panic, follow a plan. Our team has recovered over 70 projects—from landing pages to complex portals. We use automated scanners plus manual audit to find every trace of the attack. Downtime costs e-commerce businesses significant amounts per day. Our certified specialists guarantee complete remediation, preserving up to 95% of the customer base and minimizing financial losses.

Why Business Loses Money After a Hack

A hack isn't just site downtime. You lose customer trust—many users won't return if they see a browser warning. Search engines impose penalties: the site is removed from search results, and recovery takes 2 weeks to 2 months. For an e-commerce store, that means losing 70-90% of revenue during downtime. Even after the warning is lifted, ranking algorithms may penalize the site if the vulnerability isn't fixed. That's why we don't just remove malicious code—we analyze the root cause and strengthen security. Our experience shows that a comprehensive approach pays off in the first week after recovery: preventing repeat attacks saves substantial sums per month.

How to Detect a Hack Yourself

If you suspect a hack, perform a quick check—no special skills needed.

1. Check search engine status. Log into Google Search Console → Security Issues. If there's a notification, your site is compromised.
2. Review recent changes. In your CMS (WordPress, Laravel), check who created or modified files in the last week.
3. Look for suspicious files. In terminal (if you have access): find /var/www -name "*.php" -type f -newer /path/to/composer.json | head -20 — lists recently changed PHP files.
4. Run an antivirus. Free scanner ClamAV can find malware.

If you find traces, don't delete anything manually. Save a snapshot and call professionals. In 80% of cases, a hack can be detected early via log anomalies or 500 errors.

Step-by-Step Recovery Plan

We apply a four-phase approach proven on dozens of projects.

According to OWASP Top 10, 60% of hacks exploit vulnerabilities in plugins and themes. Our methodology identifies and eliminates up to 95% of common vulnerabilities in one cycle.

Case Study: E-commerce Store Restored in 2 Days

Client: Electronics store on WordPress + WooCommerce. Problem: An outdated plugin (never updated) allowed attackers to upload a webshell. Result: redirects to a phishing site, server IP blacklisted. We:

• Day 1: Switched the site to a static page, took a full database and file dump, blocked attacking IPs via firewall.
• Night: Scanned the filesystem for backdoors (ClamAV signatures and WordPress checksum verification).
• Day 2: Deployed a clean copy from the official repository, transferred only custom theme files and plugins (after updating them). Configured WAF (Cloudflare) and two-factor authentication.
• Result: After submitting a request to Google Security Issues, the site passed review in 3 days. Downtime costs were significant, but full traffic recovery took another 2 weeks. The implemented protection prevented repeat attacks, saving the client a substantial amount over the next six months.

Which Security Measures Are Most Effective?

Compare popular tools.

WAF blocks up to 95% of web attacks—10 times more effective than relying on auto-updates alone. Combining measures provides a synergistic effect, reducing the hack risk by 99%.

Technical Implementation: Commands and Code

Below are examples of commands we use during diagnosis and cleanup (for Linux).

# Snapshot for forensics
tar -czf /tmp/hacked-site-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz /var/www/mysite/

# Find files changed in the last 7 days
find /var/www/mysite -type f -newer /var/www/mysite/composer.json -name "*.php" 2>/dev/null

# Search for backdoors
grep -r "eval(base64_decode" /var/www/mysite/ --include="*.php"
grep -rn "system|exec|passthru|shell_exec" /var/www/mysite/uploads/ --include="*.php"

# WordPress: verify checksums
wp core verify-checksums
wp plugin verify-checksums --all

# Cleanup
# Deploy clean copy from Git
git clone [email protected]:myorg/mysite.git /var/www/mysite-clean

# Transfer only media files (no PHP)
rsync -av --include="*.jpg" --include="*.png" --include="*.pdf" \
  --exclude="*.php" /var/www/mysite/uploads/ /var/www/mysite-clean/uploads/

# Scan with ClamAV
clamscan -r /var/www/mysite-clean/uploads/

# WordPress: reinstall core
wp core download --force

# Block PHP execution in uploads
location ~* /uploads/.*\.php$ { deny all; }

# Hide server version
server_tokens off;

# Protect configuration files
location ~* \.(env|htaccess|git)$ { deny all; return 404; }

# Correct file permissions
find /var/www/mysite -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find /var/www/mysite -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
chmod 600 /var/www/mysite/.env

# Fail2ban for brute force
# /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/wordpress.conf
# failregex = ^<HOST>.*"POST /wp-login.php

What's Included in Our Security & Recovery Package

• Full security audit of site and server, identifying all vulnerabilities.
• Complete removal of malicious code, backdoors, and webshells.
• Data restoration from snapshots or clean copies.
• WAF, two-factor authentication, and Fail2ban configuration.
• File permissions and configuration file correction.
• Documentation of all changes and recommendations for ongoing protection.
• Administrator training on basic security practices.
• 30-day technical support after recovery.

Notifying Search Engines After Cleanup

After cleaning your site, you must inform search engines:

• Google Search Console: Security Issues → Mark as fixed → Request review.
• Yandex.Webmaster: Security → Request check.

Warning removal takes: Google — 1–3 days, Yandex — 1–5 days.

Recovery Timeline

On average, eliminating hack consequences takes 1–3 days, plus 1–2 days for security hardening. Exact timelines depend on attack complexity, data volume, and CMS. We offer a free initial analysis to estimate the work. Get a consultation with a security engineer. Order a website security audit—it's the first step to reliable protection.

Web Application Security: HTTPS, CSP, XSS, CSRF, WAF, DDoS Protection

A website breach rarely looks like in movies. More often it's: a bot finds an unprotected /admin/export endpoint, downloads the customer database, and closes the connection. Or: through an outdated WordPress plugin, a web shell is uploaded, and the server starts sending spam. Or quieter: an XSS in a comment field allows stealing admin session cookies, unnoticed for months. We have analyzed dozens of such cases — each vulnerability could have been fixed at the development or audit stage.

Web application security is not a single setting. It's layers of protection, each closing a separate class of attacks. Order an audit — we'll assess the project and deliver a turnkey plan within 2–4 weeks.

How do we ensure comprehensive web application security?

HTTPS and Proper TLS Configuration

HTTPS is the minimum mandatory level. But having an SSL certificate and having a properly configured TLS are different things.

In Nginx/Apache configuration we check:

• Protocols: only TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, SSLv3 and TLS 1.0/1.1 are disabled
• Cipher suites: prefer ECDHE (Forward Secrecy), remove NULL, RC4, DES, 3DES
• HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload) — browser will never make insecure requests
• OCSP Stapling — speeds up certificate revocation check
• Redirect 301 from HTTP to HTTPS — both in server config and code (double redirect causes SEO weight loss)

Check: SSL Labs (ssllabs.com/ssltest) should show A or A+. If B, the configuration is weak.

Let's Encrypt + Certbot for production is standard. Automatic renewal via certbot renew in cron. Wildcard certificates for subdomains via DNS-01 challenge.

Content Security Policy: The Most Powerful and Complex Protection

CSP is an HTTP header that tells the browser which sources are allowed to load resources. A properly configured CSP completely blocks most XSS attacks, even if the vulnerability exists in the code.

The problem: breaking the site with an incorrect CSP is easy. default-src 'none' — and fonts, images, JS stop working. So we start with Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only — CSP logs violations but does not block anything. We monitor reports for 2–4 weeks, refine the policy, then switch to enforcement mode.

Example of a real policy for a site with Google Analytics, Google Fonts, and Stripe:

Content-Security-Policy:
  default-src 'self';
  script-src 'self' https://www.googletagmanager.com https://js.stripe.com 'nonce-{random}';
  style-src 'self' https://fonts.googleapis.com 'unsafe-inline';
  font-src 'self' https://fonts.gstatic.com;
  frame-src https://js.stripe.com;
  img-src 'self' data: https://www.google-analytics.com;
  connect-src 'self' https://api.stripe.com https://www.google-analytics.com;
  report-uri /csp-report;

nonce — a random string generated server-side per request. Inline scripts with the correct nonce are allowed; without nonce, they are blocked. This completely breaks XSS via <script>alert(1)</script>.

'unsafe-inline' in style-src is a compromise for inline styles. It's better to remove it by moving all styles to CSS files, but that requires refactoring.

Why XSS Remains the Most Common Vulnerability?

XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) — injection of JS code through user input. According to OWASP, XSS is in the top 3 web application vulnerabilities. Three types:

Protection: never insert user input into HTML without escaping. In PHP — htmlspecialchars() with ENT_QUOTES. In Laravel Blade templates — {{ $var }} is safe, {!! $var !!} is dangerous. In React — {variable} is safe, dangerouslySetInnerHTML is dangerous. For Rich Text — use htmlpurifier on PHP or DOMPurify in the browser.

CSRF: Protecting Forms and APIs

CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) — an attacker forces the victim's browser to send a request on their behalf. Example: a user is logged into a bank, opens a malicious page, which makes fetch('https://bank.ru/transfer?to=evil&amount=50000') — if the bank is unprotected, money is transferred.

CSRF tokens — standard protection for forms: the server generates a random token, stores it in the session, and inserts it as a hidden field in the form. On POST request, the token is verified. The attacker does not know the token. Laravel does this automatically with @csrf.

SameSite cookies — modern protection: SameSite=Strict or SameSite=Lax prevents the browser from sending cookies in cross-site requests. Works in all modern browsers.

API without sessions (JWT, Bearer tokens) — CSRF is irrelevant if the token is not stored in a cookie (but in the Authorization header or localStorage). However, localStorage is vulnerable to XSS — so for sensitive data, HttpOnly cookies with SameSite are preferable.

WAF and DDoS Protection

WAF (Web Application Firewall) filters HTTP traffic for attacks: SQL injection, XSS, path traversal, known exploit patterns. Options:

• Cloudflare WAF — cloud-based, OWASP Top 10 rules out of the box, custom rules via expressions. Managed Rules automatically block new threats.
• ModSecurity (Nginx/Apache) — self-hosted, OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS). Flexible but requires tuning and monitoring of false positives.
• AWS WAF — for infrastructure on AWS, integrates with CloudFront and ALB.

DDoS protection. Cloudflare at L3/L4/L7 is the de facto standard for most sites. Automatic mitigation of volumetric attacks, Under Attack Mode during active attacks. For critical infrastructure — Cloudflare Magic Transit or specialized solutions (Qrator, StormWall for the Russian market).

Rate Limiting at the application level — an additional layer. Laravel ThrottleRequests middleware: 60 requests per minute per IP for general endpoints, 5 for /login and /password/reset. Redis as a counter store — mandatory for horizontally scalable systems (otherwise limits are not synchronized between servers).

Other Mandatory Measures

Security headers. Besides CSP: X-Frame-Options: DENY (clickjacking protection), X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff (MIME sniffing), Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin, Permissions-Policy (restrict browser API access: camera, microphone, geolocation).

SQL injection. Prepared statements everywhere. No concatenation of user input into SQL strings. ORM (Eloquent, Doctrine) protects by default. $wpdb->prepare() in WordPress is mandatory.

Dependency updates. composer audit and npm audit in CI/CD pipeline. Dependabot or Renovate for automatic PRs with updates. Critical CVEs — patch within 24 hours.

Secrets and configuration. .env — never in Git. Secrets in production — via CI/CD environment variables (GitHub Secrets, GitLab CI Variables) or HashiCorp Vault. Leak detection: git-secrets, truffleHog in pre-commit hooks.

How We Work

1. Audit — code scanning, configuration review, dependency analysis, manual business logic verification.
2. Planning — vulnerability remediation plan, stack selection (CSP, WAF, rate limiting).
3. Implementation — TLS setup, CSP configuration, headers, Rate Limiting, WAF.
4. Testing — re-penetration test, load testing, false positive check.
5. Deployment and Monitoring — enable production CSP, set up alerts, train the team.

What's Included

• Report with found vulnerabilities and recommendations (PDF + code snippets)
• Ready TLS configuration (Nginx/Apache)
• CSP policy with Report-Only and production versions
• WAF and Rate Limiting setup
• Dependency update plan
• Access to monitoring tools (Sentry, Datadog)
• 30 days of post-audit support (consultations, fixes)

Timeline and Cost

The budget is calculated individually — contact us for a project evaluation.