A new report from Malwarebytes reveals that various badly maintained WordPress blogs are being injected with an iframe that points to thepiratebay.in.ua. The Pirate Bay clone, which uses the popular Open Bay script, was found to offload an exploit kit to unsuspecting visitors.

After the Pirate Bay was raided last December hundreds of clones appeared online.

Many of these sites used the open source “Open Bay” project, which allows people to set up their own clone in just a few clicks.

Now, several months later one of the clones has gone rogue. As reported by Malwarebytes, several compromised WordPress blogs are being injected with an iframe that loads thepiratebay.in.ua.

At first sight this seems odd, since the site looks just like any other Open Bay clone. However, this one is being used to offload a rather dangerous exploit kit.

“We found the real reason behind this pretty quickly. The Pirate Bay clone is actively pushing the Nuclear exploit kit with an iframe and will infect vulnerable visitors via drive-by download attacks,” Malwarebytes senior security researcher Jérôme Segura writes.

The malicious content is passed on to users’ computers via a known Flash exploit. The payload being pushed by the Pirate Bay clone is linked to a banking trojan.

Interestingly, most other sites relying on the Open Bay project are experiencing issues as well. The main oldpiratebay.org site is currently down, and other clones don’t have any content.

TF asked the people behind the Open Bay project for a comment and we will update this article if we hear back. For now, we haven’t heard any reports indicating that more Pirate Bay clones are pushing exploit kits.

At the time of writing it’s still unclear how the iframe is being injected into the WordPress sites. A likely explanation appears to be outdated WordPress code or an old plugin.

People are advised to avoid the compromised Pirate Bay clone directly and WordPress users should make sure that they’re running the latest version of the blogging platform.

“To avoid getting their sites hacked, WordPress users need to check that they are running the latest WP install and that all their plugins are up to date,” Jérôme Segura notes.

“Other proper hygiene tips such as strong passwords and avoiding public wifi when logging into your site should also be applied,” he adds.

More technical details and analyses can be found at the Malwarebytes blog.

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Photo: Michael Theis