Internet security analysts have spotted a spike in backdoor infections on WordPress websites hosted on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress service, all featuring an identical backdoor payload.
The case affects internet service resellers such as MediaTemple, tsoHost, 123Reg, Domain Factory, Heart Internet, and Host Europe Managed WordPress.
The discovery comes from Wordfence, whose team first observed the malicious activity on March 11, 2022, with 298 websites infected by the backdoor within 24 hours, 281 of which were hosted on GoDaddy.
Old template spammer
The backdoor infecting all sites is a 2015 Google search SEO-poisoning tool implanted on the wp-config.php to fetch spam link templates from the C2 that are used to inject malicious pages into search results.
The campaign uses predominately pharmaceutical spam templates, served to visitors of t
