Notification of Hacking attempts on websites

Email Alerts of Hacking Attempts on Websites

The Edge Impact Content Driven website system (EiCD) sends alert emails to the website’s system contact email address when there are attempts to hack into the website using form submissions, or spammers attempt to use forms in some ways to send bulk emails from the website.

Whenever this occurs and the administrators of the website only receive one or two emails from the same IP address (sequence of numbers in the format “123.45.245,234”) then these emails can be ignored and deleted.

Whenever an attempt occurs the website user is told:

  1. Not to do this.
  2. That the administrators of the website have been notified of their attempts.
  3. What their internet access IP is with a link to their location in the world.
  4. That if they continue to do this then their internet IP address will be blocked from accessing all websites hosted by the website’s hosting company.
  5. Their own Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be contacted with all the users IP address details and the ISP will be requested to remove the users internet access facilities and to prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

This usually stops them from repeated attempts.

It is a very good idea that the administrators of websites are told of these attempts because then some action can be taken to stop it. If administrators are not told then the hackers will continue to try and hack into the website and if this is achieved then this can cause the business to be in breach of data protection laws in the UK and EU, it can seriously disrupt business and cost the business money.

If repeated alerts are received from the same IP address then it may be worthwhile blocking the IP address from accessing the website. This is done using the “.htaccess” file in the root folder of the website. In order to edit the “.htaccess” file, the administrators or system support people will have to have FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access to the website in order to download the “.htaccess” file, change it and upload it. The “.htaccess” file however has to be configured without any error in specification otherwise this function may stop working altogether which could affect other functions in addition to any blocking mechanism put in place.  

Contact Edge Impact Websites if you wish us to block any IP addresses from accessing your website by forwarding the alert email/s to support@edgeimpact.co.uk. We will automatically assume that you also want us to report the attempts to the user’s ISP (this will take additional time) unless you specify otherwise. You will only be charged for the actual time taken in minutes, at the standard hourly rate as detailed on our www.edgeimpact.co.uk/special_offers.php page.

 

 

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