This can happen to the best of us. Hacks suck. There is no formulaic response to them that is guaranteed to fix your site, but I’m going to outline a few steps that might get you back in the saddle and hopefully help you identify the extent of the damage. The most common type of hack I see is against sites running known systems (like WordPress) where the hacker modifies the index.php file and prints extra code into the pages. This causes visitors to inadvertently download malicious code and it causes Google to black-list your site. Did this happen to you? Keep reading…
1. Verify that no sensitive data was on the server. It’s a whole other ballgame if you were storing credit card or social security numbers. In a nutshell, never store sensitive data on your server! It’s too hot to handle! Let a professional store that stuff. If you did have sensitive data on your server, you can stop reading now, because you need to hire a professional security consultant (and possibly a lawyer) to help dig you out of this mess. Read more