Thank you for writing about this. It really helped me understand what was happening with my site:

https://essayscam.org/forum/es/paperhelp-ukraine-spamming-internet-submit-spam-3922/

My website was one of those hacked, resulting in more than 10 pages of my search engine results being devoted to these crooks. And I can see from my Google Webmaster Tools that about 60 other websites are now linked to non-existent writing-related pages on my site...so they were probably all hacked as well.

Thank you for your WordPress security plugin recommendations, as well. Clearly, the security I was using was not up to the task.

About the only thing I have to add is that webmasters should keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools to watch for problems:

Search Traffic > Links To Your Site

If other sites begin linking to pages which shouldn't exist, go to the Google Search Engine and type:

site:YourSiteName.com

(Do not insert a space after the colon...and if your site has a different web suffix, type that instead!)

This will display the links from your site that Google has indexed. If some of them are unusual, click on the Cached version (the Down Arrow to the right of the link URL).

If you've been hacked, you'll notice search engine optimized word salad (random words strung together with a few key writing-related phrases thrown in). You'll also see about 15-20 links to to other sites, and a time-stamp of when the snapshot was taken. The latter gives you some idea of when your site was hacked.

In my case, my site was linking to about 1,500 other sites (15 links per hacked page * 10 hacked pages per search engine results page * 10 search engine results pages).

Major,

No, the hackers were pretty opportunistic and there doesn't seem to be any pattern - running the gamut from photography sites, a gun club, a women's roller derby team and even someone running for public office (for school board trustee).

writers2beware,

Google Webmaster Tools reveals 70 (not 60) inbound links from other sites to the following non-existent pages on my website:

/medical-case-study-help/
/good-site-buy-essay/
/write-a-reflection-essay/
/writing-essay-english/
/thesis-writers-in-india/
/essay-write/
/how-to-write-my-essay/
/dltk-custom-writing-paper/

The 70 sites doing this are:

festethiopia:com
theyogashopct:com
markmoralesdesign:com
saradipino:com
lawithkids:com
greenwayenv:com
thebragawteam:com
pennyconferencing:com
dawnvircks:com
firetidecreative:com
alexandrelapointe:com
milobear:com
top10tag:com
pressurebraisingpan:com
maulfeedandseed:com
coppershims:com
lmarketingandpr:com
daclaud:com
catdewormer:com
flamingtoadwines:com
triolamilpa:com
pilonsec:org
tearsinourchili:com
mrlpartnersllc:com
euro-fest:net
coachrobertsimmons:com
azthayers:com
allnaturaljuiceinc:com
redwoodareahospital:org
heatherriggleman:com
phildrakett:com
crowndentalplan:com
thesearethedaughters:com
wwiaf:org
seriinc:com
hickorylanehorsefarms:com
hopsonandwhite:com
vliegticketsnaarcuracao:info
winslowcottageptown:com
viroquaholistichealth:com
intermarriage:com
ajabbiati:com
gstiki:com
billbergmanmusic:com
puertoricomassage:com
sedonacarclub:com
nanianania:com
yahoonoo:com
aspectek:com
ghosthands:com
lglcpafirm:com
cullmangrotto:com
knotawlbeads:com
cebia:org
districtdesignbr:com
sanwilshire:com
cencalsupras:com
stelizabethri:org
jollygoodtime:com
youandmepuppets:com
smhobgyn:com
hiromisogo:com
ericwelchwcs:com
mrgroutandtile:com
emotiongateway:com
abudgetrooter:com
metacred:com
ashbillings:com
dikultura:com:mx
skoglundwoodwork:com

Disclaimer: Some of these sites may have already cleaned up their malware but are still listed on my Webmaster Tools by Google. (In fact, the list was a little longer earlier this week, and it appears 5 sites have dropped off of it).

As for the other direction (outbound links from my site to non-existent pages on other sites), I think I don't really have time to go through the Cached pages on Google and find all 1,500 of 'em.

"How, then, did you come to post in this forum? There must have been at least ONE essay/paper site involved, right?"

I misunderstood Major's question.

What I meant was that the root URLs of the hacked sites seem pretty random. (In my post above, there's a cat-deworming site and a site about puppets. No relation between those two that I can see).

But every single one of the 70 sites linked to a non-existent page on my site involving essays/papers. (Non-existent in the sense that I never created them, but the hacking programs DID temporarily create them on the fly for Google's spiders to crawl).

Once indexed by Google, clicking on one of those essay/paper Search Engine Results ultimately redirects the user to the paperhelp.org site.

Sorry for the confusion.