Problem statement
After five months of successful operation, Devs Core’s maintenance team discovered that their client’s website was experiencing performance issues and had been hacked by a SQL injection attack. The attack had resulted in the insertion of irrelevant pages and posts on the site, and the website was taking longer to load than usual.
Methods
To address the problem, Devs Core’s maintenance team took the following steps:
- They downloaded the source code of the website and searched for any suspicious changes made by an unauthorised administrator.
- They identified and removed external links that were being called every time someone accessed the website.
- They deleted the posts and pages created by the unauthorised administrator from the MySQL database of the website.
Tools
The maintenance team used Visual Studio Code and the cPanel of the client’s website to access the source code and database, respectively.
Results
As a result of the maintenance team’s efforts, the client’s website was recovered from the SQL injection attack and returned to normal operation. The client was unaware of the attack and was relieved that their brand reputation had not been compromised.
Conclusion
Devs Core’s swift and effective maintenance efforts were able to save their client’s website from a potentially damaging attack. The incident highlighted the importance of regular maintenance and the need for effective input validation methods to prevent such attacks in the future.
Recommendations
Based on this experience, Devs Core recommends implementing input validation methods in all forms and search fields to prevent similar attacks in the future.