Cleaning the site is the easy part. Finding the way in is the job.
Website security and malware removal cleans an infected site, removes it from Google's blacklist, and hardens it against reinfection. Haryes works on WordPress and custom sites and provides a written report of the entry point and the fix.
A site that is cleaned but not closed gets reinfected.
Most malware removal services delete the files they can find and declare the site clean. A week later it is infected again, because whatever let the attacker in is still open and the backdoor they left behind was never found.
What a compromise usually costs a Kenyan business:
- Visitors shown a browser warning, which stops traffic dead.
- A Google blacklist entry, removing you from search results entirely.
- Spam pages injected into your site, ranking for things you do not sell.
- Email from your domain landing in spam everywhere, because the domain's reputation is damaged.
- Customer data exposed, which is a legal exposure as well as a commercial one.
How a clean-up runs
In this order. Skipping step four is why sites get reinfected.
Contain
Take a forensic copy, stop the damage spreading, and get the site to a safe state for visitors.
The bleeding stops.
Clean
Infected files and database entries removed, injected content stripped, and unknown administrator accounts closed.
A site free of known malware.
Find the entry point
Logs, file timestamps and version history examined to establish how they got in. This is the part that is usually skipped.
The actual cause.
Close and harden
The vulnerability patched, credentials rotated, permissions tightened and unnecessary access removed.
The same route closed.
Recover reputation
Review requests submitted to the relevant blacklists, and the site monitored while it is reinstated.
Back in search results.
How sites in this market actually get compromised
Rarely anything sophisticated. Almost always one of these four.
An unpatched plugin
A known vulnerability with a published exploit, on a site nobody has updated in months.
The most common cause.
Weak credentials
A reused or guessable administrator password, often on an account that belonged to a former developer.
Rotate and remove.
Shared hosting spread
A neighbouring site on the same server is compromised and it reaches yours.
Isolation matters.
A left-behind backdoor
From a previous infection that was cleaned without finding the entry point.
Why step three exists.
What you get
A fixed-scope clean-up, then an optional maintenance plan so it does not happen again.
A clean site
Malware and injected content removed.
- Files and database cleaned
- Unknown admin accounts removed
- Verified against a scan
A written report
Including how they got in.
- Entry point identified
- What was accessed, as far as logs show
- What we changed to close it
Reputation recovery
Back into search results.
- Blacklist review requests submitted
- Search Console security issues cleared
- Monitored until reinstated
Hardening
So the same route fails.
- Credentials rotated
- Permissions and access tightened
- Monitoring in place afterwards
Questions clients ask before they commit
How quickly can you start?
Same day where we can. A live compromise is treated as an emergency, because every hour it runs costs you traffic and reputation.
Will we lose our rankings?
A short compromise caught early usually recovers once the blacklist entry is cleared. A site left infected for weeks, with spam pages indexed, takes considerably longer and that is the honest answer.
Can you guarantee it will not happen again?
No, and nobody honest will. We close the route that was used and harden the site, but security is ongoing. Sites on a maintenance plan get compromised far less often, which is the real answer.
What about customer data?
We report what the logs show was accessible. Your obligations to notify anyone affected are a legal question, and we will tell you to take advice rather than guess at it for you.
Infected now, or worried?
Warnings are showing or your site is serving spam.
This is an emergency and we treat it as one.
Emergency recoveryYou want to avoid being in that position.
Hardening and monitoring cost a fraction of a clean-up.
See maintenance plansA clean-up that does not find the entry point is a delay, not a fix.
