Websites down & hacked

Hi

Sorry, couldn’t see relevant forum so posting here. If it needs to go elsewhere, would appreciate if it can be forwarded to the relevant place, thanks

My questions is websites are down and been told by Hostgator they have malware on them and need to know how can we get the wordpress sites back up.

• hostgator says they can’t do a backup as backups may be infected
• the cpanel is infected
• all the website index.php files and htaccess codes infected.
• been recommended sitelock but need to know are their alternative solutions out there to get the malware removed as its taken them 6 months after countless chats, just to get this recommendation to us.
• We don’t have access to any of the dashboards either though can get into the cpanel at the moment. Been learning as we have been going along, would say still 50% a novice and still learning.

There are so many suggestions out there that say they can get rid of malware but literally don’t even know where to begin so would really appreciate some recommendations going forward, as you guys are good!

Furthermore (going forward once they are up!) from research will make extra sure whatever plugins and themes are used in the future they are not nulled and they have at least half to a million installs showing etc.,

Would appreciate If someone can point us in the right direction as to the best way to get the sites back so we can start building up the wordpress sites again!

Thank you in advance. Appreciate.