I contacted my hosting provider (Namecheap) and they told me it’s a backdoor attack that may come from some plugin or theme updates in my WordPress. I installed some security plugins and the issue seem to have been resolved. But it often appears every few days when I view the website on Chrome browser. It doesn’t seem to happen when I use DuckDuckGo or other browser’s to view my website.
What is the reason for this? And what are the best plugins to prevent this from happening so often?
That type of ad is definitely coming from malware. Security plugins generally won’t plug the hole that allowed the malware to infect your site – the malware will keep returning. You need to figure out which plugin/theme caused the hack.
Go though your plugins and theme, checking the changelogs for each – check that it’s been updated by the developer in the last 9 months, and that you’re using the latest version.
If you’re up for it/capable, there are a bunch of good guides on how to clean a malware-infected wordpress site, or use a malware cleaning service, like Wordfence & Sucuri have for $199usd
It does appear to be malware.
Malware plugins don’t always fix the issue. It could have come from a plugin, a theme, WordPress core (especially if it’s out of date). Could also be the host- although they would never tell you that.
This has nothing to do with the search engine. If you’re seeing it appear randomly, it’s definitely the site.
What you need to do is verify your hosting is configured properly and do a more thorough audit of the website’s files.
What I do when this happens and I can’t locate the file is I basically replace the entire site (core, theme, plugins) all fresh. You would just not replace the child theme, uploads folder, or wp-config.
Make sure your file permissions are correct, consider hardening wp-config, htaccess, and your theme’s functions.php. Make sure you’re running a supported version of PHP. Make sure there are no bogus cronjobs setup.
I’m typing this on my phone so it’s sort of truncated but that’s basically everything.
yes that’s a malware. DuckDuckGo doesn’ show this probably due to their malware and ad blocking mechanism. But for other people this will be visible. I can help you in preventing malware again on your website.