Problem:

When you visit your WordPress website you are randomly redirected to unwanted websites.

Verification:

• Log in your website as an Administrator.
• Go to Appearance >> Theme Editor.
• Click on the Theme Functions link on the right side.
• Verify if malicious code was injected into the functions.php file.

Example of malicious code:

<?php @ini_set('display_errors', '0'); 
error_reporting(0); 
global $zeeta;

• Download the wp-config.php file to your machine via FTP or SSH.
• Verify if malicious code was injected into the wp-config.php file.

Example of malicious code:

include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/header.php');

Solution:

• Stop the website.
• Download the whole website to your local machine.

cd /var/www/huybien.com
sudo zip -r huybien.zip /var/www/huybien.com/html

• Download the latest version of WordPress.
• Unzip and the latest version of WordPress to a new folder.
• Copy the wp-content/uploads folder, the wp-config.php, .htaccess, web.config, and ads.txt file from your original website to the new folder.
• Review and remove all the suspicious contents in the wp-content/uploads directory of the new folder.
• Go to the wp-content\themes folder of the new folder.
• Manually re-download and unzip all the necessary themes.
• Go to the wp-content\plugins folder of the new folder.
• Manually re-download and unzip all the necessary plugins. Pay attention to the plugins that were closed due to Guideline Violation.
• Delete all your website content in your root directory in your hosting server.

cd /var/www/huybien.com/html
sudo rm -rf *
ls -a

• Zip and upload the new folder (without the folder name) to your hosting server. The typical path is /home/ubuntu.
• Unzip the new content to your root website directory.

cd /home/ubuntu
unzip huybien.zip -d /var/www/huybien.com/html

• Start the website.

Configuration:

• Log in your website as an Administrator.
• Change your Administrator’s password.
• Change permissions for the html folder.

  sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/huybien.com/html

• Remove all the unused plug-ins or themes.
• Revert permissions for the html folder and set permissions for the wp-content folder.

  sudo chmod -R 775 /var/hosting/huybien.com/html
  sudo chmod -R 777 /var/hosting/huybien.com/html/wp-content

• Install, activate and configure a CAPTCHA plug-in to protect Login Form, Registration Form, Lost Password Form, Reset Password Form and Comment Form if there is no one.
• Disable insecure FTP access if there is one.
• Install and activate the Simple History plugin to review access to your website. After 1 or 2 days, review the access information, and possibly block the malicious IP addresses using the Windows Firewall.
• Install, activate and configure Cerber Security plug-in to automatically detect and block the malicious IP addresses.