Thanks to Milo for giving me the heads-up concerning the discomforting news which targets WordPress & Joomla users.
Templates Browser is re-distributing public blog themes which are modified in such a way as to exploit the end user by inserting hidden spam or malware links. A quick search concerning the website pulls up the following links on AboutUs, Joomla forums, and Onnoot - here & here.
The links are inserted via an additional functions.php file which is included with the theme downloads. If you’re shopping around for public themes, I strongly recommend that you download directly from the original authors website.
Unfortunately, one of my own public themes - 5ThirtyOne V2 - is one of the "dirty" themes that has been modified and is currently being redistributed.
Spread the word and inform other WordPress & Joomla users - Digg this.
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63 Comments
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That is absolutely despicable, perhaps that is the reason for this discussion on wordpress.org http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=553&page? Of course, the designers were not at fault.
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I didn’t have a clue about this. Wordpress should really make an announcement on this so people know it.
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I had that! I was looking at my source code the other day fixing some issues and it had loads of ads but only in the code, but I don’t understand where they came from seeing as I made my theme from scratch! There was an extra ‘function’ call but I don’t have a functions.php page!
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wow. good find. I’m going to check my page even though i downloaded it from the author, just to be sure.
Is there any sort of recourse to take against these fraudsters?
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If the theme was made from scratch - meaning that every line was coded by yourself - then there should not have been anything "hidden" that should have surprised you.
At minimum, contacting the host is the first step to do. Digg this and spread the word so other WordPress users find out and check their source code.
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dugg. let us know if contacting the host gets you anywhere. Are these themes released under any sort of license like Creative Commons or GPL?
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Most of the themes on that site are released under CC or GPL. License, a template download site like that which redistributes for profit could care less.
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Does this website http://www.openwebdesign.org/ contained malicious themes too? To my knowledge some of the templates there were also ported from wordpress.
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The link for AboutUs.org should read “AboutUs”, not “AboutUS” (the website is not about the USA).
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I posted about this earlier
http://varunkrish.com/beware-templatesbrowsercom-are-fing-spammers.html
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I believe that site is safe. It looks to be distributing plain CSS / XHTML templates for people to adapt for use on their own sites.
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Very helpful, informed Lorelle and weblog tools collection, we’ll see if we can stop this issue.
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thanks for letting us know Derek.
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Thanks Derek! Thanks Milo.
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TB Site is off.
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Milo@ TB is back
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Thanks for the info! I’m glad I make it a habit of downloading themes only from the author’s website or theme’s own page.
I’ve dugg it and also posted about it. Hopefully Wordpress and Joomla users would be alerted before their blogs or sites get compromised.
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If you use a web-of-trust browser extension like WOT or Lijit, make sure to mark the site as dangerous.
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Good work Derek, you’re currently on the front page of Digg. Congrats.
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The credit() function they inserted in your theme 5ThirtyOne2 (didn’t check others) is pulling stuff from something like http://1.templatesbrowser.com/wp.php?url=%2Fblog%2Findex.php&host=mysite.com
Sounds pretty stupid to me, this really begs for DOS & abuse. Like, put your 100mbits on this URL and hammer it.
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This may not necessarily occur to just WordPress or Joomla themes; in fact, other scripts may be affected as well, such as Drupal, bevolution, Mambo, etc. I have been using publicly-released themes for my site - http://cityhall.extrarisk.com and I am happy to use them, but I do careful examine their codes before plugging in. But of course, I may still be careless.
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Also beware of computer viruses that can inject a malicious JavaScript code into your website. More information about this issue : http://w3net.eu/?p=46
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