Hi all,

 

I have been asked by someone to do a redesign for 5-6 of their companies websites.

 

Today, I checked the source codes after the client mentioned there are some hidden links. At first I thought this was just the previous developer keyword stuffing etc.

 

To my shock and horror at the bottom of just one page from all the 5-6 sites were many links to illegal content such as animal pornography.

 

I require some advice on what to do, right now, i'm certainly not even entertaining the idea of meeting up with this person, which under normal circumstances I'm willing to do.

 

I have replied to the client mentioning this illegal content but have not since had a reply.

 

Regards

Welcome to the forums.

 

It sounds as if the site may have been hacked, does the site run on some sort of content system?

I agree, the site has most probably been hacked. Check out in Google to see if it is in their index. If not I would also mention to the client that there may well be SEO implications too.

Thanks for the responses,

 

I mentioned it to my client and he had no idea that these hidden links were there. I have since accessed and removed these links for him.

 

As for the site, it was a simple static site with a few pages and a contact form. The client himself has mentioned since that he has read somewhere that a hacker may have gained access through this contact form. Not knowing much about this side of computing I struggled with a response as I wasn't sure if this was possible at all.

 

If so, what security measures can we take to prevent this. We had already done the obvious, changing ftp passwords etc.

 

Thanks

Jake

If the contact form was using insecure code it's possible that someone exploited that. It could also be another site on the same server that let the hacker in, especially if the server isn't well protected.