The exploitation of vulnerabilities within the WordPress architecture has resulted in widespread server compromises due to cross-site contamination, along with various other factors such as poorly configured passwords, outdated WordPress versions, plugins, themes, and more.
Often, malware and harmful code can remain undetected for extended periods unless you conduct regular scans of your website. By regularly scanning your site, you can ensure your safety and keep your website consistently protected.
In this article, we will demonstrate how to easily scan your WordPress site for potentially harmful code.
Within the cPanel environment, you can start a malware scan using ImunifyAV, which is free and accessible from WHM. However, ImunifyAV is limited to malware scanning capabilities. To remove any malicious code, you may need to manually clean or delete it using File Manager or FTP.
* You might consider to upgrade to the paid version Imunify360 which allow auto malicious scanning, server wide WAF protection and auto malicious removal and etc.
Alternatively, you could utilise the URL Sucuri Sitecheck to knew whether the Wordpress website is compromised. The Sucuri sitecheck scanner automatically scans your website to ensure it is clean of malware, suspicious redirects, iframes, link injections etc. But this as well limited to scanner ability only as well.
* You might want to check out Sucuri for your website, which offers WAF and malware cleanup services.
Additionally, you may want to download any WordPress plugin recommended in the post below to scan your site and eliminate malware as quickly as possible.
MalCare – WordPress Malware Removal Plugin
WordFence Malware Cleaner
Sucuri Malware Scanner and Cleaner
Astra Security Suite
CleanTalk Security
BulletProof Security
Cerber Security
Anti Malware Security and Brute Force Firewall
Using the approaches mentioned above, you should be able to determine if your WordPress instance is infected and then take steps for malicious file removal, backup restoration, or reinstating the WordPress core file installation via WordPress-Toolkit. It’s important to take actions that can help minimize the risk of reinfection. While it’s impossible to guarantee that the risk will ever be eliminated entirely, we can collaborate to keep it as low as possible.