• New to WP and trying to get up to speed. Must say I am demoralized with the amount of malware built-in to some seemingly highly recommended, clean and genuine free theme sites. Was hoping to cut my teeth on designing from a free site then moving on to some purchased ones but who is to say that base64 or others won’t be found in ones I put up good money for?

    Is it worth cleaning up a theme that you really like and how does one ensure they are running a safe theme? I am using the suggested plug-ins Theme Check, TAC and Exploit Scanner but how does one really get any comfort long term?

    Thanks in advance for any wisdom on this.

    Best, Chief Foodie

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  • If you are using FREE themes, use only WordPress recommended themes downloaded from WordPress. In some cases, I have seen that even WordPress recommended themes may contain malicious codes and dozens of extra hidden links if you download from sources other than WordPress Theme Repository.

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Is it worth cleaning up a theme that you really like and how does one ensure they are running a safe theme?

    No, it’s not. Honestly. 😉

    http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

    http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/

    There are good and reputable GPL compatible theme providers who also offer free versions of their work. But for every one of those, there are dozens of [ self-moderated: colorful descriptive adjectives removed ] websites.

    Those sites don’t care about the user and just want those links spread far and wide. And some do really very bad things to your installation without you being aware of it.

    Give this a read (when the site comes up) for a good reason why you should just stay clear of base64 encoded themes.

    http://www.chipbennett.net/2010/12/10/only-download-wordpress-themes-from-trusted-sources/

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  • The topic ‘Malicious Code– base64’ is closed to new replies.