The official WordPress database contains an enormous catalog of themes and plugins. All the themes and plugins present on the official WordPress channel are vigorously tested for malware and malicious links by the theme creators and WordPress themselves. Sadly, the same isn’t true for the thousands upon thousands of themes available for WordPress on third-party channels and websites. In this article, you’ll learn how to protect your website from malicious codes, themes, plugins, and malware.
Such third parties commonly add malicious code to their themes and plugins. Not all creators have your best interest at heart.
This code is then used for:
- Getting backlinks from your website without your permission;
- Getting access to your data, including usernames and passwords;
- Redirecting your visitors to other sites and products;
- Showing ads and ad banners.
Website owners must protect themselves and their websites while doing whatever is necessary. To protect oneself from attackers, hackers, and intruders, it is recommended to always use a VPN. With Black Friday just around the corner, this is the perfect time to get great cybersecurity tools with VPN Black Friday deals.
Understanding the Risks: Malicious Themes and Plugins
Themes and plugins form the backbone of many websites, offering customization options and additional features that extend the functionality of platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. However, not all themes and plugins are created equal. Malicious actors may embed harmful code within seemingly legitimate themes or plugins, leading to a range of security issues, including:
- Security Vulnerabilities: Malicious code can create backdoors, allowing unauthorized access to sensitive data or administrative controls.
- Performance Degradation: Poorly coded themes or plugins can significantly slow down your website, impacting user experience and SEO rankings.
- SEO Penalties: Search engines like Google penalize websites that host malicious content, leading to lower search rankings and decreased organic traffic.
- Data Breaches: Vulnerabilities in themes and plugins can expose user data, leading to breaches that compromise privacy and trust.
Protecting Your Website
The first thing to do during the effort of protecting a website is to perform a few checks. The most basic checks include keeping an eye on the number of crashes, warning messages from Google and WordPress, and a white screen of death. Not all creators have your best interest, learn how to protect your website from malicious codes, themes, plugins, and malware.
If your website crashes more often, you receive too many warning messages about its behavior from Google and WordPress, or the white screen of death appears often, these are strong indicators that either the website or the plugins installed on the site contain severe malware.
Following is a list of steps a website owner can take to mitigate or reduce malware and malicious code threats.
Precaution
Prevention is better than cure. One of the best ways to ensure safety is to take precautionary measures before attempting any installation.
To this end, first, it is important to look for the theme’s origin. Ensure that the WordPress theme or plugin you are downloading or installing is from a reputable source, a reputable developer, or a reputable third-party vendor.
Before and After Installation
After ensuring that the theme or plugin’s source is reputable and genuine, the next step is to perform checks on the downloaded packages by running security scans.
The simplest method for checking viruses is running a simple virus scan. This simple and easy method works most of the time for viruses. Yet, it fails to check for malicious code responsible for link redirecting and stolen backing. So, anything related to the source code cannot be checked or filtered using regular antivirus software. This is where online tools come in.
Online Tools: Malicious Themes and Plugins Protection
Online tools a website owner can use to check the integrity of the theme and plugins include to Protect the website from malicious codes, plugins, malware and themes:
- VirusTotal
- Theme Authenticity Checker
- PCRisk
- Ask Sucuri
- Exploit Scanner
- Brute Force Firewall
- Google Safe Browsing
The above also contains tools to check for malware and malicious code on installed themes and plugins. Each tool follows different steps to do so. It is best to visit their respective sites to ensure accurate steps are followed. These tools can be very beneficial for website owners.
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The best options for seasoned developers and technical experts are to check the files on the server if installed manually or to check the system’s files if downloaded. So, seasoned developers can quickly go through all the source files.
Malicious code is often easy to spot if the experts know what they seek. However, this is a manual process, and if the plugin’s theme is extremely large or complex, it can take a lot of time to perform the check. In such a scenario, it is better to use an online tool.
Extra Best Practices for Website Protection
- Limit the Number of Installed Themes and Plugins: Minimize your website’s attack surface by only installing themes and plugins that are essential to your site’s functionality. Remove any unused or unnecessary extensions to reduce potential vulnerabilities.
- Implement Strong Access Controls: Use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to secure access to your website’s admin dashboard. Limit user privileges to minimize the impact of a potential compromise.
- Backup Your Website Regularly: Maintain up-to-date backups of your website’s files and databases. In the event of a security incident or website compromise, backups enable you to restore your site to a previous, secure state quickly.
- Educate Your Team and Users: Educate your team members and website users about the importance of security best practices. Encourage them to report any suspicious activity or potential security threats promptly.
Malicious Themes and Plugins Protection Conclusion
The best method to avoid malware and malicious code is to ensure the WordPress theme or plugin integrity before the installation. If specified errors occur sometime after installation, then utilizing online tools to check and mitigate them is the next best option. Each tool follows different procedures and methods to remove malware. Thus, it is better to visit the official website of the chosen tool for detailed instructions.
