A hacked website is a page into which an attacker has inserted their own content or a redirect. It shows up in various ways: pages with unrelated topics appear, visitors coming from search get redirected elsewhere while the website is fine on direct access, or a warning appears in the search results. The damage is twofold – loss of visitor trust and removal of the website from the results, which takes months to fix. The procedure once this is discovered is clear: take the website offline, determine the extent, restore from a backup taken before the compromise, update the system and extensions, change all passwords, and only then request reconsideration. Prevention consists of regular maintenance, limiting the number of extensions, and verified backups stored off the server. A useful addition is setting up alerts in webmaster tools, which flag suspicious content before a customer notices it.
See also: Website maintenance and updates, NIS2 and cybersecurity, Security incident and reporting.
