Malicious comments can be posted on a website to harm it. Hackers post positive-sounding comments containing malicious code that gets saved to the database. When the comments are approved, the code executes and can cause issues like errors, plugins being removed, or posts/categories disappearing. To protect the site, comments should be manually approved, users should register before commenting, a CAPTCHA plugin should be installed, and untrusted users should not be given admin privileges.