1. The emergence of unusual content
One of the biggest red flags that hackers have taken control of your website is the sudden appearance of strange content. Maybe you went to bed with everything in order, only to wake up to a new logo, an odd sentence, or a warning message claiming your site contains malware. When that happens, visitors trying to access your site may get an alert and they’ll bounce immediately.
Sometimes the changes are glaring, but other times they’re subtle and easy to miss, depending on the hacker’s goal. Make it a habit to regularly check how your website looks from a visitor’s perspective.
2. Unlisted products pop out of nowhere on your website
If you start seeing products on your e-commerce store that you never listed or approved, that’s a strong sign hackers have slipped into your website’s admin panel or content management system (CMS). They’re likely uploading or modifying listings without your knowledge.
This could also mean your product database has been compromised. Hackers might inject or alter product entries through vulnerabilities like SQL injection or weak database security. These rogue products could be traps to lure customers into clicking, submitting, or handing over sensitive info. It’s especially dangerous when third-party plugins, themes, or vendors have been compromised.
3. Form submission errors
SQL injections, a common form of attack, target website forms and input fields. If hackers are messing with your site this way, you’ll likely notice a sharp increase in errors during form submissions as the system rejects the malicious inputs.
You and your users may also see more errors if attackers are tampering with the form submission process. By bypassing validation, they can send unexpected or malformed data to the backend, which triggers these errors.
4. Discrepancy between customer payments and your receipts.
Don’t you hate it when customers pay for products but you can’t find their payments? It’s a nightmare. We all hate it, darling. It shouldn’t be a problem in this day and age, but it happens, especially when your website is under attack.
When attackers target your site, they might intercept your payment system or data transmission. They can mess with or siphon off payment info, leading to missing or misreported transactions.
These criminals might even manipulate or delete your payment records during a data breach. If they’ve compromised your payment system or gateway, they could be intercepting or redirecting payments, causing discrepancies between what your customers see and what your system records. It’s easy to think your payment processor is untouchable, but remember how Efficient Services Escrow Group got hacked and had to shut down? Anything can happen.
5. Your site is blacklisted in Google catalogs.
Google’s algorithms are pretty sharp at spotting malicious content. If they find something fishy, they’ll blacklist your site to protect users from harmful material. They’ll flag you if you’re caught hosting malware or phishing content. When you see this happen, there’s no denying it—you’ve been hacked.
Hackers might have used your site to host spam or phishing pages, or they might have messed with your site’s SEO elements to push their own agendas. They could insert hidden links or content to drive traffic to their malicious sites. All these red flags will lead Google to blacklist your site, and they’re a clear sign that you’ve been compromised.
6. Poor website performance
While poor performance can sometimes be chalked up to things like hosting downtime or server lag, it can also indicate that something much more sinister is happening.
For instance, your site might be slow because attackers are bombarding it with heavy traffic, overwhelming the server, and causing slow load times or even outages. This is known as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Hackers could also have injected malicious code (via something like SQL injection or cross-site scripting) that’s messing with your site’s usual functions, making everything sluggish or glitchy.
Sometimes attackers send bots or scrapers to aggressively crawl your site and steal data, which overloads your server and drags down performance. So, if users start complaining about slow load times, don’t just brush it off—check for possible attacks.
7.Sales and inquiries have abruptly come to a standstill
Imagine waking up one morning to find your website completely silent. No visitors, no sales. The short answer? Yes, it’s possible.
Cyber criminals might have wreaked havoc on your site. They could have altered or disabled crucial parts like forms, checkout systems, or contact methods, causing a sudden drop in transactions and inquiries. They might have injected malware, leading to functionality issues or scaring users away with security warnings. Exploiting vulnerabilities in your site’s code or third-party plugins could disrupt normal operations, leaving you with a plummeting user activity. And let’s not forget a DDoS attack, which can render your site unreachable altogether.
There are many ways they can throw a wrench into your sales. But here’s the key takeaway: while your marketing strategy might face setbacks, the chance that you’ll wake up to find everything falling apart overnight is slim—though not impossible, depending on your scale.
8. Unexplained server process activity.
Unless you’re in IT, you might overlook the memory, CPU, or network usage your website demands. But if you’ve been paying attention to such things, then you can quickly catch on and take action. This is because spotting odd spikes in CPU, memory, or network activity from certain processes are all red flags that something’s gone awry.
The alarm bells ring louder if your server processes are running unexpected commands, accessing sensitive files, or connecting to strange external servers or unfamiliar IP addresses. As this unfolds, you might also see bizarre changes in server files or directories. And to make it all worse, your server logs might start filling up with weird data—failed login attempts, strange error messages, or unauthorized access tries. These are glaring signs that you could be under a cyber attack.
9. The system logs reveal an unexpected CPanel access attempt
Sometimes, the system logs just light up with something you don’t want to see: an unexpected CPanel access attempt. A strange IP address is trying to connect to your website’s control panel. CPanel access is usually locked down to trusted IPs or users, so this is a red flag.
What’s likely happening is attackers are trying to exploit weaknesses in your website or server. This could be part of a bigger strategy to seize control of your site.
If you get a notification about an unauthorized access attempt and realize the IP address in question or its location is unfamiliar to you, don’t wait around. Take action immediately.
10. Your emails are sent to the SPAM folder
If your emails are landing in the SPAM folder, it might be a sign of a security issue or hack. How’s that possible?
Hackers who’ve infiltrated your email system or website might use it to send out spam or malicious content, setting off spam filters. They could also exploit your system to send unsolicited emails or phishing attempts globally.
The more people report your domain as spam or suspicious, the more your emails get flagged as spam, drastically reducing your deliverability.
While this doesn’t immediately mean your website has been hacked, it signals a vulnerability in your system. If someone can breach your email server, your website could be next. It’s only a matter of time and priority.
In conclusion, one of the biggest truths in cybersecurity is that there are no certainties. There’s always more to learn, more to protect, more to analyze, and more to understand. This post doesn’t cover every single sign of an attack on your website—it only highlights the most prominent ones so you can spot them early and take action. Each glitch has its own fix, meaning you need a range of strategies and solutions we can’t fit into one blog post.
But here’s the silver lining: you can always reach out to us or keep up with our blog as we share more insights. If you’re already a client, you’re subscribed to our security insights newsletter, where we dive deep into topics like these and break them down thoroughly. We hope you finally figured out where to look for signs of a cyber attack on your website.