{"id":490,"date":"2012-12-04T14:09:14","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T19:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inmotionhosting.com\/support\/2012\/12\/04\/cleaning-up-a-htaccess-hack\/"},"modified":"2021-08-16T23:27:35","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T03:27:35","slug":"cleaning-up-a-htaccess-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inmotionhosting.com\/support\/website\/cleaning-up-a-htaccess-hack\/","title":{"rendered":".htaccess Hack Cleanup"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this article we\u2019ll discuss steps you can take to clean up an .htaccess hack<\/strong>. The .htaccess file is used to primarily setup rewrite rules to control the way your site is accessed. You might not notice that your .htaccess file has been hacked until either a manual investigation, or you happen to get a malware warning on your website that it\u2019s redirecting to a malicious site.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you might catch down in your web-browser\u2019s status bar that a foreign website is attempting to load content on your website, or you might notice a web-browser warning. These can be common signs of a .htaccess hack, you might also notice that you\u2019ve fallen in search engine rankings. The typical reason for this is that hackers will attempt to hack your .htaccess file so that when search engine bots crawl your website they are redirected to the website that the hacker has put in place instead of your own.<\/p>\n

You can do a quick outside spot check using Google\u2019s Safe Browsing diagnostic page to see if they\u2019ve detected anything malicious on your site in their most recent crawl. You would simply want to replace example.com<\/strong> with your actual domain name in the following URL:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/google.com\/safebrowsing\/diagnostic?site=example.com<\/div>\n

You can also read more about the Google Safe Browsing page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following the steps below you can learn how to check your .htaccess file for hacks, and how to clean them up if you do find any.<\/p>\n

.htaccess hacked clean up steps<\/h2>\n
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  1. Login to your cPanel<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. Under the Files<\/strong> section, click on File Manager<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  3. In the top right-hand corner, click on Settings<\/strong>. Select the Document Root for:<\/strong> option, and choose your domain from the drop-down.<\/li>\n
  4. Ensure that Show Hidden Files<\/strong> is selected.<\/li>\n
  5. Then click Save<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
    \"file-manager-hidden-files\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\n
    \u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    \u00a0<\/div>\n
    \n