Website Crashed – Have I been hacked?

  • Resolved alexanderhwp

    (@alexanderhwp)


    5 years, 8 months ago

    Our website went down today and we don’t know what to do to get it back up. When we go to it there is a message

    This site can’t be reached
    play9869.asdfyr5tge32.agency’s server IP address could not be found.

    The URL gets changed to “https://play9869.asdfyr5tge32.agency/?utm_campaign=bKMuT7EMVXU5Z6UvvSHONGlfu-yV43iC8T8uYixAFxs1&t=main9_fe3805fe396e09531c”

    What is weird is that when I go to login to wordpress to edit our site, I can do that and get into the dashboard. Once I’m logged in the site displays normally but it has that black wordpress admin bar running along the top.

    I tried googling play9869 and I can’t find anything.

    Our web host restored a backup of our site but it’s still not working. They suggested we were hacked or we need to update / disable plugins.

    Our previous admin has installed several plugins (38?) and I dont even know where to start.
    Active (30)
    Inactive (6)
    Update Available (7)
    Must-Use (1)
    Drop-in (1)

    I see that there are 7 updates available. If I update the plugins could it mess something up? Should I do it anyways and see if that fixes it? Maybe I need to disable some, but which ones? (I’m very new to wordpress and just trying to fill in during the absence of our admin)

    Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

    • This topic was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by alexanderhwp.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Carefully follow this guide. When you’re done, you may want to implement some (if not all) of the recommended security measures and start backing up your site.

    To avoid the possibility of being hacked, it is highly recommended not to install too many plugins. Also, so that data is secure, you must install the backup feature, either through a hosting provider, or manually backup.

    One more thing, I see your web has not used the SSL certificate security feature. This can be seen from the address bar: http, it should be https.

    Thread Starter alexanderhwp

    (@alexanderhwp)

    Thank you both for your help. I’m not sure what happened but I went through the steps you posted and sometime this morning the website came back up. I spoke with our host and they looked through error logs and seem to think it was unoptimized plugins / themes.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Website Crashed – Have I been hacked?’ is closed to new replies.