What Are The Symptoms Of A Hacked Magento Site And How To Prevent It?

For all Magento users, security concerns are always present. Even with some of the best security features available, Magento websites often get hacked because new vulnerabilities are constantly discovered. 

In this article, we will explain what makes Magento store vulnerable and share a set of security audits and how you can prevent your store from future hack attacks. 

Symptoms Of A Hacked Magento Store

First, let us understand some of the possible signs of a hacked Magento store and also possible attack types that might have affected it:

1. Web store unavailability

• Your store is constantly unavailable.
• Your store is blocked by the hosting service.

Possible attack type: Denial-of-Service (DoS) (it disturbs your online presence but do not threaten your data safety)

2. Administration panel and content issues

• You are unable to log in to the admin panel
• Unwanted changes made to your store content
• There is a new user with administrator rights

Possible Attack Type: Admin panel break-in (Critically dangerous to the website and business)

3. Poor performance

• Your store does not appear in search engines. 
• The store gets redirected to unsolicited pages and shows a major drop in traffic.

Possible Attack Type: Hacked Redirect (an attack that aims to grab the store’s traffic and expose customers to malware, phishing attacks, or advertising spam.

4. Reported data theft

• Customers report suspicious activities with their accounts
• Customers report their credit card credentials stole

Possible Attack Type: Phishing (email-based attacks with the intent of data access and identity theft)

Action/Prevention plan

It is important to prevent your store from future hacking and for that, you have to detect and fix existing vulnerabilities and perform a security audit. We have listed the primary steps of the action/prevention plan.

Magento extensions review

Magento extensions are very useful but there are few which we do not need or no longer maintained by their creators and thus have vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is important to review your list of add-ons and check whether they are up-to-date, this helps to remove the abandoned extensions and uninstall them to lower security risks.

Install Fixes & Patches

Developers can fix bugs and vulnerabilities once they are uncovered. Magento regularly releases fixes in the form of patches so it is recommended to check if all latest patches are installed on your system.

User permissions check

It is vital to check the appropriate permissions level because this way you can prevent any further unsolicited access to your Magento store. The check ensures that all groups of users are granted only intended access rights.

Deep scanning for malware

You can use custom and commercial tools to scan your Magento store for malware and also scan cross-system integrations as the attack could have affected them.

Introduce Two-factor authentication 

To remove existing unsolicited access to your Magento administration panel and prevent its hacking in the future, it is advisable to implement two-factor authentication. Even if a hacker has the credentials to your admin panel, they won’t be able to enter without a code sent to your registered email or mobile phone.

Backup plan

Even though you have applied rigorous security measures, it is essential to have your entire web store data backed up. This will help in restoring your web store in case of data loss.

Summary

Magento has its own security mechanisms but we need to be proactive and take preventative steps like security audits, penetration testing, and vulnerabilities assessment. Timely updates and regular monitoring is the most efficient way to lower the possibilities of your solution being hacked to the minimum

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