Website Redirecting

mdonaldson

I have my own website and last night when trying to visit it I was redirected to another website selling watches! I contacted my hosting website and they restored my website from a recent backup and it is now working correctly. I also changed my login password for my hosting websites control panel.

I take it that my website had been hacked and I was wondering if anyone could give me an explanation of the most likely reasons this happened? Did someone get hold of my password for my hosting website or was there another way it could have been hacked without the need of my password? I have virus scanned my computer and it is clean. I have had the website for 4 years and nothing like this has happened before.

D_M_E

Could be the hosting site has been hacked - there was a report of this a few weeks ago, can't recall which one it was that got hacked.

mdonaldson

My hosting site is Smarterasp.net and I can find any details about them being hacked.

kwikbreaks

Did you undertake any investigation into what mechanism was being used to redirect your site? Was the other site hosted by the same ISP?

Lorian

have you used the same username(email)/password combination anywhere else?

Check you email address at https://haveibeenpwned.com/ any leaks of your info?

what is the website written in - is it some content management system?

mdonaldson

Sorry, it was very late at night when I noticed and I was in such a panic about it I just deleted the website and got my hosting website to restore it from a backup! I'm kind of kicking myself now for not a least downloading a copy of the website files for analysis after but as I said I was in such a panic about it, having never had anything like this happen in 4 years of having the website!

mdonaldson

No, I have not used the same email/password combination anywhere. I have checked the email address I use with the hosting website at haveibeenpwned.com and although there are some breaches, they are just for websites I rarely use. I log into the hosting website with a username. The website is written in c# and ASP.NET.

RealGem

It needn't be the hosting site that was hacked. It could have been just your site. The hackers use dictionary scripts, so never use any actual words in your password. Google Password Generator to create a long one with obscure numbers letters and symbols.

If it was a Wordpress site, never use Admin as the admin username. And never have your admin username the same as your Display name. Here's a video on how to change your Wordpress admin Username. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESsysqgp6xw

And you can also change the Display name in the dashboard area.

And also use a gobbledegook password for Wordpress. Many WP sites are hacked as they are easy if they have admin as the username and a simple word password, and the hackers don't need to touch anything on the server.

BaldwinJackson

Well there are several root cause which can create such issue like there was simple malware which infected your website by redirecting your website to their site to get free traffic. Well I would recommend you to change all the C Panel Pass, WP Admin Pass, FTP Pass and change the default URL of W Dashboard which /wp-admin to /custom and block it using ht access file. I have been facing such issues for quite long time due to themes, plugins and hosting. One of my website was hacked and when I restored the backup version there was malware which provided access to hacker in no time. I would recommend to use create a local copy of your website using WordPress backup plugin to avoid any future inconvenience. All the best

S0litaire

if it was a wordpress site, then take a look at Wordfence

https://www.wordfence.com/

I've the free version running on my site and it does a good job alerting me about potential site issues.

AndyPix

Why all this talk of wordpress ? OP clearly states it is written in C#


OP How secure is your site against the usual hacks ?? SQL injection etc ..
Are you sanetising user inputs ??


If you want to post the URL i will check it over for you