Virus and bot attacks on websites most often begin with software vulnerabilities, weak administrative access protection, and a lack of automated traffic control. The good news: most problems can be significantly mitigated with a set of basic, yet systematic, security measures. The first step is to clean up the site and its environment: install updates for the CMS, plugins, themes, and server software. Many successful attacks exploit known vulnerabilities for which patches have long been released. At the same time, it's worth taking inventory of components: disable unused plugins, modules, and services, and check for any outdated libraries or scripts. Strengthen your logins: admin, forms, and authentication Viruses often enter a website through compromised administrator accounts or abuse of forms. For administrator access, use multi-factor authentication, complex, unique passwords, and rate limiting. If possible, restrict access to the control panel by IP or via a VPN/proxy. For user forms (login, registration, comments, feedback), use spam and data spoofing protection: server-side validation, dangerous character filtering, CSRF protection, and anti-bot mechanisms. New-generation CAPTCHAs and/or token-based approaches are useful, but they are best tailored to the user experience and workload. Add anti-bot control and traffic filtering To reduce the impact of bots, it's worth setting up rules at the server and/or CDN/WAF level. Request rate limits (especially for login and registration pages), behavioral signal checking (e.g., abnormal request patterns), and intelligent filtering are often effective. A WAF can block typical attack patterns, including malicious payloads in URLs and parameters. Enable rate limiting and request rate throttling for critical endpoints. Configure WAF/CDN rules by geography, ASN, and traffic profiles (where appropriate). Use anti-bot protection and challenge only where really necessary. It's important to set up a proper logging system: system, web, and application logs should be viewed in a single view and stored long enough for investigations. When you see a spike in requests, panel access, or strange form submission attempts, logs help you understand what exactly is happening and what IPs and patterns are causing the incident. Minimize surface and risk of contamination To make it more difficult for viruses to gain a foothold, monitor access rights and file structure. Disable write access where it's not needed, apply the minimum necessary privileges to processes, and restrict execution where it's not required. Regularly check the integrity of critical directories and files: the presence of unexpected scripts or changes to templates is often the first sign of a compromise. Pay special attention to backups. Create backups with clear retention policies and periodically test the restore process (otherwise, you'll only learn about the problem when an attack occurs). If suspicious changes are detected, it's important to quickly determine whether code, configurations, or accounts are affected. To summarize, the most practical protection plan looks like this: updating and removing dependencies, strengthening authentication and forms, enabling anti-bot control and a WAF, and then monitoring and being prepared for recovery. This combination reduces the risk of both virus infections and malicious automated traffic.