What is a WordPress Pharma Hack and How to Clean It Up?

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There is nothing more frustrating than finding out your site has been hacked.. It is important to remain calm. I know how to resistPharma) pharmaceutical hacker attackand I can show you how to clean up your WordPress website.

However, manually removing the WordPress Pharma hack is a complex and time-consuming process. I recommend using a malware removal plugin that will clean up your site in a jiffy. In this article, you will learn not only how to fix a WordPress Viagra hack on your site, but also how exactly your site was hacked and what the hackers want from you.

The content of the article:

• What is a (Pharma) Pharma Hack?
• How to detect a WordPress Pharma hack?
• How to fix farm hack?
• Post-fixation measures
• How to prevent WordPress Pharma from being hacked in the future?
• Impact of WordPress Viagra Hack on Your Website

What is a (Pharma) Pharma Hack?

The Pharma hack, also known as the Google Viagra hack, is a type of SEO spam attack where a legitimate website is used to sell illegal drugs. In this type of attack, hackers take over websites, inject malware into them, such as the favicon.ico virus, etc.; and uses the site to sell illegal drugs such as Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra.

The sale of these drugs (especially without a prescription) is illegal. This is why hackers use your websites as parasites to feed on your resources to sell illegal drugs.

No, the illegal drug trade is a highly profitable and competitive business. Merchants are always looking to improve their website rankings through SEO tactics such as building links from good websites. Your site turned out to be one good site.

Unfortunately, Google will blacklist your website if it finds spam links that take you to malicious sites that sell illegal pharmaceuticals. And this is just one of the many horrific consequences of the conditional pharma hack.

How to detect a WordPress Pharma hack?

Chances are you've found a problem with your website, and a bit of Google search led you to look up pharmaceutical hacks.

Often with such hacks, when you directly access the site, everything will be fine. It is very likely that one of your clients has indicated that your site has strange pop-ups that redirect you to illegal drugs for no reason.

Another reason to be suspicious is if you see your site ranking for very strange keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with your industry. Here are some good ways to check if you are indeed the victim of a pharmacy hack:

• Google for your site + terms for illegal drugs such as Viagra or Cialis
• Google for your website and visit your own site. If you are redirected to another site, you are infected with a redirect hack, a type of WordPress pharmaceutical hack.
• Sometimes they will only be displayed when visiting from a phone.
• Inside the Google Search Console
• Use fetch like Google
• Use a malware scanner

Of all these methods, using a malware scanner is the most practical and effective. I highly recommend that you scan your website at the server level for hidden malware. But not all malware scanners are the same. It is likely that you already have a malware scanner installed on your website and the pharma hack went unnoticed.

The reason for this is quite simple - most malware scanners are not equipped to detect malicious code. Instead, they look for popular malware signatures in their database. A small change in malicious code can lead to malware going completely undetected.

So what can you do?

Use MalCare, it uses AI that gets smarter with every hack it encounters. This means that MalCare detects malicious code, even if it is completely unknown, and then prevents the more than 250,000 websites it protects from being hacked.

How to fix farm hack?

There are 2 ways to fix WordPress Viagra hack:

1. Plugin usage (easy way);
2. Scanning manually (hard way).

Plugins are designed to make your life easier. But you can try the hard way if you like.

1. Scan and clean the conditional farm hack with a plugin

I recommend using MalCare to remove malware from your site. This scanner is designed to detect the most elusive hacker attacks, and it will be able to detect a hack where other security plugins would most likely fail.

The first scan takes a few minutes. The plugin is equipped with deep scanning technology that scans every corner of your site to find hidden and sophisticated malware. Removing malware with MalCare is the easiest way to clean up a website. All you have to do is click on the Auto Clear button.

That's all. Your site will be free of malware in less than 60 seconds.

2. Scan and clean Google Viagra hack manually

Unlike a plugin, manual scanning is neither easy nor fast. I highly recommend that you avoid manual scanning, especially if you don't know anything about WordPress, PHP, HTML, and Javascript. Just remember that even professionals have a hard time finding this hack.

Even if you are an experienced developer who is happy with the idea of rummaging through WordPress files and folders, it will take you a long time to find pharmacological hacks. Unless you're willing to spend days, if not weeks, scrutinizing every line of code on your website, avoid manual crawling.

Whichever route you take, be sure to back up your website. Don't skip this step. No matter how experienced you are, WordPress websites are prone to crash if you make one mistake. For example, installing the wrong version of a plugin can cause your site's heart to stop. And it will be a lot of fun.)

To find the WordPress Pharma hack, follow these steps:

Step 1: Upload the .php files

Pharma hacks are commonly found in .php files such as:

• index.php
• header.php
• footer.php

Here's how to download them:

• Open your web hosting account and go to your hosting control panel > File Manager > public_html > index.php. Right-click the file and select Download.
• Go to Hosting Panel > File Manager > public_html > Themes. Open a theme that is active on your site. Right click the file header.php and select the Download option.
• Find a file footer.php in the same folder. Right click and download.

Step 2: Download the original copy of the .php files

The index.php file is part of the main WordPress files. Just make sure it's the same version that is installed on your site. The footer.php and header.php files are part of your WordPress theme.

If you have a free WordPress theme installed. You can download a copy from wordpress.org. Users of paid themes should get a copy of their theme from where they purchased it.

Step 3: Run the diff checker

Then open this scanner, then download both versions of each file manually and run a diff check. If you find scripts that are not part of the source files, they may be part of a hack. But I don't recommend removing any code unless you're sure it's malicious.

In many cases, there are different versions of the core WordPress files for different languages. In other cases, the free and pro versions of a plugin or theme may have the same folder structure, but with completely different code.

Here are some common functions of malicious scripts:

• grade
• base64_decode
• gzinflate
• preg_replace
• str_rot13
• executor
• system
• approve
• stripes slash
• move_uploaded_file

Features are not malicious by default. Many plugins use them for legitimate reasons. In addition, the verification program will take some time to produce differences, and the results will not always be correct on the 100%.

Keep in mind that the diff checker is not a replacement for a malware scanner. What you want to do is identify hacker scripts through a process of elimination. This is definitely not the most efficient or accurate way to do it, and comes with some risks. So if you remove code snippets based on the diff results, you could end up breaking your site.

However, if you are completely sure that the code is malicious, removing these snippets should remove the malware from your site. This concludes the WordPress Pharma hack fix. But before moving on, I strongly recommend that you review the next section.

Post-fixation measures

WordPress Pharma hacks are often due to vulnerabilities in plugins and themes. If they are not removed, the hack will definitely return. Here's what you need to do:

• Update your plugins and themes immediately
• Remove all installed plugins and null themes, even inactive ones.
• Remove inactive plugins and themes, even if they are not reset

Hackers tend to create fraudulent administrator accounts to access your site after you've cleaned it up. Find fraudulent administrator accounts on your website and remove them.

These are just a few small security measures. For more comprehensive and long-term measures, I recommend reading the article on hardening WordPress security.

How to prevent WordPress Pharma from being hacked in the future?

Cleaning up a hacked website even once is hard enough. You must be absolutely sure that you will not be hacked again.

The first step is to install the security plugin. Scanning is only a diagnostic step, removal and prevention are the backbone of WordPress security. No one can access your site without running into a firewall. This can prevent a range of attacks such as:

• Brute force is a brute force attack.
• XML-RPC attacks and XSS attacks.
• DDoS attacks.

Of course, a firewall won't protect your site from all possible threats. You should definitely have at least a strong password.

A security plugin for example: All In One WP Security or Wordfence Security will regularly scan your site. Such plugins will even check your plugins and themes for vulnerabilities.

Impact of WordPress Viagra Hack on Your Website

The consequences of hacking are terrible. You will face severe backlash on your WordPress website, such as:

• A noticeable drop in search engine rankings for the keywords you target;
• High bounce rate as visitors are redirected to different websites
• Wasted SEO efforts in the future;
• Google blacklist warnings on your website, e.g. this site may be hacked, a fraudulent site is ahead, etc.;
• Suspension of web hosting;
• Email providers blacklist your site;
• High costs for cleaning, restoration and damage repair;
• A serious drop in the image and reputation of your brand.

To be honest, all of this can harm your business in the long run and can result in significant short term financial losses. The only way to get out of this mess is to take security seriously. If you are sure that your site has been hacked, do not waste time and take action right now.

Conclusion

Now that you've cleaned up your website, take the time to put in place security measures to prevent future hacker attacks. After that, you can return to developing your business.

FAQ

What are the signs of a conditional pharma hack?

Signs of pharmaceutical companies being hacked include website redirects, websites ranking for pharmaceutical keywords such as Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, and websites linking to other pharmaceutical websites.

How to check if your site has been hacked by pharmacology?

Finding out if your website has been hacked is not easy. In most cases, you won't know if your site has been hacked just by visiting it.

1. You will need to google your site along with illegal drugs.
2. Try checking your site on a smartphone. See if you find a page you didn't post. Or pharmaceutical links to another site in the footer.
3. Check if your Google Search Console found malicious activity on your website.
4. The easiest way to find out if you have been affected by the Google Viagra hack is to run a malware scanner.

Where is the pharma hack inside a WordPress site?

A pharma hack can literally be hidden anywhere inside your site's files and database. It might even be in your sitemap. Typically, you will find code snippets hidden in the core WordPress files, but without a malware scanner, this is impossible to determine.

Hackers will do their best to hide the malware they install on your site. They may even hide pieces of malicious content or code in various hacked files and folders. Detecting pharmaceutical hacking malware is extremely difficult because it is hidden in extremely smart ways. At first glance, this looks mostly like a legitimate piece of code.

Usually prescribed methods of searching for this will not give a result. Thus, you cannot load the website and search for keywords like viagra, etc. You will need to use a malware scanner to find malware hidden on your website.

How was the site hacked if it had a security plugin installed?

There are too many ways to hack a website. The reality is that most WordPress security plugins can only detect malware by its signature. This means that your security scanner will only find malware if it is popular enough to be recognized.

To put it simply: if a hacker uses unknown malware, it may go unnoticed by most malware scanners.

Why was my website hacked?

Your website has been attacked due to a vulnerability such as outdated or nulled plugins or themes, among other things, an easy to guess username and password. In order to protect your website from pharmaceutical hacks or any other type of hacks, you need to implement security measures.

How Does a WordPress Pharma Hack Work?

Pharma hacks work like this:

1. You have a vulnerability on your site, which is most likely an outdated plugin or theme.
2. Hackers use it to gain access to your site.
3. They then scatter spammy keywords or even publish new pages on your site. The goal is to use your site to rank for keywords.
4. Visitors to your site are redirected to a site that sells illegal pharmaceuticals such as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

How to find the source of a hacker injection on my WordPress site?

To find the source of a hacker attack on your WordPress website, you need to scan it with a malware scanner.

Why are hacker attacks hard to detect?

WordPress Viagra hacks are hard to detect for the following reasons:

1. Hackers target high ranking pages because they get a lot of traffic. Or they target pages with high earning potential. The hack will not be present on the entire website, making it difficult to detect, especially if it is a large website with dozens of posts and pages.

2. This type of hack is not visible to you, the website owner. It is also not visible to direct visitors. It is only visible to search engines like Google or Bing. The hackers are targeting organic visitors who search for pharmaceuticals such as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra on a search engine.

3. Hackers want to use your site for as long as possible, so they take steps to keep it hidden. They have developed ways to mask malicious codes that are difficult to detect even for experienced programmers. However, a good malware scanner can easily detect your website being hacked and help you clean it up.

How to remove farm hack in WordPress?

To remove the pharma hack on your WordPress website, you need to use a WordPress malware removal plugin.

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