Alaya.net was attacked! But we are back 🙂

A couple nights ago one of our editors experienced technical issues while attempting to create a post on Alaya.net.

Subsequent investigation revealed that there were malware files on Alaya.net.

Even after removing malware files multiple times they continued to appear on the site.  The malware attacks occur from specific attack URLs aimed at the site which activate malicious code and cause more malicious files to be placed on the site.

Based on our analysis the attack seems to be fairly advanced.  It has evaded detection multiple times and multiple malware scanners were not able to completely alleviate the problem.

However we have managed to do a lot of work to repair Alaya.net and now have three different malware protection programs operating.

Recommendation to all WordPress operators: Always keep all of your sites updated. If you have multiple sites all in one directory on a shared hosting plan or cloud instance and one of the sites is hacked it can infect other sites as well. The following three WordPress security plugins are highly recommended: WordFence Security, WP Cerber, and NinjaScanner.