Cyber-crime continues to grow and evolve; thus, malware is still a formidable weapon in hackers or cybercriminals armoury.
They design malware, or malicious software to cause harm, or for stealing personal data from a site on the web or from a personal computing device, be it a smartphone, computer, or mac.
Website malware will steal sensitive personal information, and in the worst case, scenarios can hold websites to ransom.
The malicious code can even take over the website without anyone realising. As a result, if there are any visitors or transactions through the site, further devices can be infected, and payments can be re-directed.
In most cases, victims of malware may not realise they are a victim until it’s too late.
How Do I Know if My Site is Infected with Malware?
The good news is some tools can help you determine if sites contain malware. It can be for site owners, or in some cases; visitors can use these tools.
Here are some of the best tools available to check website for malware infection.
1. SiteGuarding
Scans website for malware and delivers a detailed report. There is a free option, and it contains many plugins for many CMSs. If you do sign-up, you can get a malware removal in 3 hours, and lots more protection scanning and services.
It uses Blacklists from Google, McAfee, and Norton, and it can check WordPress and Joomla files.
2. Quttera
If you have WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others, this free website scan can scan website for malware before delivering an in-depth report. The website malware scanner comprises malicious files, suspicious files, potentially suspicious files, and external link detection, among others.
3. Sucuri
Being one of the most popular website security tools to check the website for malware. The website malware scanner can cover any platform, including Magento, Joomla, WordPress, and many others.
It detects if there is malware and can use blacklists from McAfee, Yandex, Opera, Norton, Google, and more to detect any spam injection, threats, or site defacements.
How Do You Check if a File Has Virus?
It is advisable to use good antivirus software on your system, although you can check files before you download them using the VirusTotal browser extension for Chrome or Firefox.
When using this, you will have a new entry to your right-click context menu. Merely click this and select the file you were thinking of downloading.
On your device, you can select the file and then right-click to scan with your third-party antivirus software.
How Do I Check for Malware on Windows 10?
If you have a Windows 10 device and you wish to check for malware, you can use the inbuilt scanner, which is inside the Windows Security, or you can purchase one of the standalone antivirus software such as Norton Antivirus.
You have several ways to get to the malware scanner in windows 10. Here is the primary way you would access it.
- Click on the start menu
- Select settings
- Click ‘Update Security’
- Select Windows Security on the left
- Select ‘Open Windows Security’ on the right
- Click’ Virus & Threat Protection’
- Select Quick Scan or change your scan options for more in-depth scanning.
It is possible to check the areas you wish to scan. This can run for a while and may slow down the performance of your computer if it is a full scan hunting for malicious code.
Make it Hard for Malware
One of the best options to help stop malware infections is to make it harder for them in the first place.
Besides a website scanner, you can make use of a VPN service. These bolster up your security as nothing else can.
You can find many of these acts like malware scanning yet at the server level, and these infected files never reach your device. Working with a website scanner, a VPN service can immediately highlight you with any vulnerability.
However, it would help if you still had the monitoring of your system to keep it clean and protected. One thing to be wary of is you won’t find these VPN features on the cheapest VPN or a free one, and it does require one of the market leaders.
Even some of the top ones won’t carry out a malware scan, yet they do make your connections secure and invisible to stop malicious code making its way to your computer.
