Websites and the CryptoPHP Infection

Could Your Site Be Infected?

If your website uses a content management system such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, you will want to be aware of the CryptoPHP infection. Like many infections of this nature, the CryptoPHP infection is both sneaky, and can spread the maliciousness once it’s there, so it’s good to be aware of it if you may have the potential to encounter it.

So Just What Is it?

CryptoPHP is an infection that works like a botnet. It is a sophisticated program that uses your website to conduct illegal “black-hat” SEO tactics such as adding links to other, possibly malicious websites. It can also upgrade itself, and since it communicates with other servers it can update itself and behave as a drone that could do anything from sending spam to attacking other sites.

How Do You Get it?

CryptoPHP is acquired by downloading and installing a theme to their WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal site – specifically a free theme found online. The infected theme has a nulled script that contains a line of code that appears to include PHP but instead appears to call on an image. Hidden inside the image is the real, malicious code.

How Can I Prevent It?

There are a few simple ways to avoid infection:

• Don’t use free downloaded themes on your site – it is difficult to tell what is infected and what is not.
• Don’t accumulate extra “unused” themes just sitting around on your site. It’s easy to collect dozens of these while trying them out, but best to reduce this number as much as possible. Your current theme and ones in development are all you really need.
• The sites we here at Appletree Mediaworks LLC create are CryptoPHP-free.

How To Know If You’re Infected

For WordPress: Install the Wordfence plugin and enable the option to scan images – CryptoPHP hides in a png image, but is actually obfuscated code. This will detect the infection.

Other sites: Download all source code and search for this line:
<?php include(‘assets/images/social.png’); ?>

Our sites here at Appletree MediaWorks LLC are CryptoPHP-free. If you have concerns over your own sites, or have any questions on keeping your website up to date and secure, contact us or visit our blog for more information.

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For More Information on CryptoPHP – http://www.wordfence.com/blog/2014/11/wordpress-security-nulled-scripts-cryptophp-infection/