I am the administrator of a small private school. Several users have reported malware on our school website that redirects them to a blog with negative info posted about the school. I have not been able to see this first hand, since the security on our network blocks whatever is causing the problem. We have tried working with our webhosting service (Ipower) who said there is nothing they can do and directed us to Google. Can anyone tell me what recourse we have? Thanks.

Hello! I am not an authorized responder, but I am pretty sure that they will first direct you to http://wiki.castlecops.com/Malware_Removal_and_Prevention:_Introduction. Should that fail, you may then go on to Trend Micro HijackThis Logs (which, I believe, you availed yourself of several years ago). Best of luck.

Could this possibly be a mean prank by a student; a competitor?

The web hosting service is responsible for the security of the site and in fact CAN do something about it if there is malware on their server.

Can you describe more exactly what is happening? Why do you think they are referring you to Google (who won't be able to do anything about malware)?

The more precise you can be, the more we can help.

Hi there moot

I am interested in your situation as it would appear that someone has accessed your site (with admin rights) and caused some mayhem.

This can usually be handled by removing the offending page (or pages)

If you can get someone to provide you with the links that the redirects happen from you should be able to access those pages from your Site Control Panel or FTP Client and replace them with pages that are clean

You web host would be able to help if you can give them the links the redirect happens from also

That will be the first step

From there, you will need to restrict the access and ramp up your security. Usually your sites control panel will have tools to help you with this and changing passwords will restrict access to the back end.

Hope this is a help in starting to clear it up