Work / Website security
A hacked site sending visitors to a casino blog
A compromised WordPress site was redirecting its own visitors to a casino blog. Every day it stayed up was traffic lost, reputation spent, and a growing risk of being flagged by browsers and search engines. Aniverx cleaned it and closed the hole that let it happen.
At a glance
The problem they came with.
What was actually going wrong, before anything was built.
The damage was public and immediate
Customers, not an audit, were finding it. Every visitor sent to a casino page is a customer who now thinks the company was careless, whether or not they come back.
The infection was in the database
It was not a bad file somebody could delete. Injected code in the database survives the obvious fixes, which is why the problem kept returning for whoever tried first.
Cleaning is only half the job
A site cleaned and left as it was gets infected again, usually within days, through exactly the same door.
What we built.
Described by what it does for the business. How it is put together is a conversation we are happy to have, but it is not what this page is for.
Found and removed, in files and database
The malicious code was traced and removed from both the site files and the database records it had been written into.
Core files replaced with verified copies
Rather than inspecting each one, the WordPress core was replaced with fresh, known-good files, so nothing tampered with was left in place.
The way back in closed
Access was hardened and two-factor authentication put on the accounts that can change the site, so a stolen password is no longer enough on its own.
The results
What is different about the way this business runs now.
- Visitors reach the company's own site again, not a casino page.
- The infection is gone from the database as well as the files, so it does not come back on the next page load.
- Signing in to change the site now needs a second factor, not just a password.
- The site is being watched, so a next attempt is noticed by the owner rather than by a customer.
Getting the site clean took hours. Making sure it stayed clean was the part that mattered, and it is the part most clean-ups skip.
Other work like this
Is something in your business working like this?
Describe what is taking the time, and we will tell you whether it is worth automating, including when the answer is no.