How to Scan Your WordPress Site for Potentially Malicious Code

Do you want to scan your WordPress site for potentially malicious code?

Usually, malware and malicious code can go unnoticed for a long time unless you regularly scan your website. By scanning your site, you can ensure you stay safe and that your website is always protected.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily scan your WordPress site for potentially malicious code.

When To Scan Your WordPress Site for Malware and Malicious Code?

Most new WordPress website owners don’t install a WordPress security scanner right away, which means that malware or a malicious code injection can go unnoticed for a long time.

This makes right now the best time to scan your website for malicious code and malware. Many users won’t notice something is wrong with their website until it is too late.

Even if your site is not hacked or affected, you should still learn to scan your WordPress site for malicious code. It will help you protect your website against future attacks.

Plus, you can easily improve your WordPress security and lockdown your site like a pro by knowing the right tools and processes to use.

That being said, let’s take a look at the tools you can use to thoroughly scan your WordPress site for potentially malicious code.

1. Sucuri

Sucuri is the industry leader in WordPress security. It’s one of the best WordPress security plugins in the market. We use Sucuri at WPBeginner as a WordPress firewall and to speed up our site.

They offer a free Sucuri Security plugin for WordPress that lets you scan your website for common threats and harden your WordPress security.

To quickly scan your website, you need to install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, you can navigate to Sucuri Security » Dashboard, and it will tell you if your site has any issues with your WordPress code.

The plugin will check your WordPress files to see if they are changed. It also scans for possible malicious code, iframes, links, and suspicious activity before it reaches your website.

Beyond the free WordPress scanner, the real value comes from paid plans that offer the best WordPress firewall protection.

Sucuri includes a DNS level website firewall, which is more effective than standard firewalls.

It also serves your website content through their own CDN, which can give your website a performance boost and improve your website speed.

Most importantly, if your website gets infected, then Sucuri experts will clean your website at no additional cost.

Cleaning a hacked WordPress site is quite difficult even for experienced WordPress users. Knowing that you have real security experts available to clean your website is a huge peace of mind for small business owners.

2. Wordfence

Wordfence is another popular WordPress security plugin that lets you quickly scan your WordPress site for suspicious code, backdoors, malicious code and URLs, and known patterns of infections.

It will automatically scan your website for common online threats, but you can also launch your own in depth website scan at any time.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can navigate to Wordfence » Scan and then click the ‘Start New Scan’ button to run a security scan.

After that, you’ll be alerted if any signs of a security breach are detected and the steps you can take to secure your website.

Like Sucuri above, it also comes with a built in WordPress firewall, but it runs on your server before WordPress is loaded. So, this makes it a little less effective than a DNS firewall.

3. IsItWP Security Scanner

The IsItWP Security Scanner is another tool that lets you quickly check your WordPress website for malware, malicious code, and other security vulnerabilities.

Simply enter your URL, and you’ll get a detailed breakdown of any security issues your site is experiencing.

It’s powered by Sucuri and helps you quickly scan your website for potential vulnerabilities, while offering step by step instructions to improve your WordPress security.

Now that you know the best tools to use, let’s show you the best course of action to clean up malware and malicious code on your site.

How to Clean up Malware or Suspicious Code in WordPress?

One of the first steps you should take is immediately changing all of your WordPress passwords.

This includes passwords across all of your WordPress user accounts, WordPress hosting account, FTP or SSH user accounts, and your WordPress database password.

If a hacker gained access to your website via a compromised password, then this can help ensure they won’t be able to do any further damage.

Next, you need to create a complete WordPress website backup by using a plugin like UpdraftPlus, or manually through phpMyAdmin and FTP.

For more details on creating a backup, see our guide on how to backup and restore your site with UpdraftPlus.

This ensures that if something happens during the cleanup, you can still revert back to the infected state of your website.

After that, we recommend hiring a WordPress security professional to clean your website for you.

We recommend using Sucuri, since each of their premium plans includes a malware removal service to clean up your website for you.

We hope this article helped you learn how to scan your WordPress site for potentially malicious code and malware. You may also want to see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site and our comparison on how to choose the best web design software.

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