Defender stuck in Scan

Google showing different description than my business of my site when I’m searching on google. Tried to scan using Defender and it’s stuck. Need help please.

  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Bruce

    I hope you’re well today!

    I checked the site and after increasing WP_MEMORY_LIMIT and clearing caches I was able to run Defender scan fully. It does take some time but it worked.

    Unfortunately, you’re right – the site does seem to be infected and it’s rather serious. It’s possible to clean it up but it would be best to restore the site from the pre-infection period instead, if it’s possible, and then try to secure it a bit more.

    That said, do you have any backup that you know that’s clean at that could be restored (without significant data loss or with content loss at “acceptable” level)?

    If not then it would be best to:

    – clean up files marked by defender as not belonging to WP core (note: there’s also one folder reported but that might be additional site install so I’m not sure if it can be removed – can it?)

    – remove any not-necessary plugins and themes from site

    – override all the plugins with fresh copies of their files
    – override /wp-includes and /wp-admin folders of WordPress and WP files in the root folder of installation (except for wp-config.php and .htaccess files) with fresh copies from WP install package

    – then also remove any users from site that are inactive or not necessary; change WP passwords and passwords for FTP/CPanel accounts

    – update PHP to 7.x (note: this is important but I’m not sure if available at your host; if not, you might need to consider switching hosting plan)

    and possibly implement e.g. CloudFlare in front of the site to further secure it.

    Best regards,
    Adam