I was hit with a malware attack over the summer, around July. My sites are on Hostgator's share servers (paid). I see in the error logs, where their security where fighting the infected files, by removing them and the file would re-populate and eventaly over powered them. Looks like attack came from some plugins.

Htaccess files were placed on EVERY file to lock the user out. I contacted Hostgator support, they want over $300 to fix and restore. I already have a back up so I wanted to do it myself. Every folder had the htaccess and php files deep in the directory tree. Some could just be deleted, others had to be change permissions and then deleted. It took hours over a couple days. (I understand why Hostgator charges so much).

Anyway, in short, after deleting and changing permissions, those file 're-populated' themselves. Back a square one. Hostgator say those files have to be deleted before 'restored' files can override the corrupted ones. I plan to use Filezilla to restore files.

Is there a way to add a malware removal tool to scan, quarantine and eliminate infected files? I would delete the whole directory and restore it but some folder wont delete without changing permissions five levels deep.

If you been through this how did you rectify the problem?

Thanks.