The Self-Healing Hack: Hiding in Plain Sight Artwork

CyberBrief Project

CyberBrief Project is an audio series that breaks down one creative cyber-attack technique in each episode.

Rather than covering routine threats, each episode focuses on clever methods that repurpose tools in unexpected ways.

Voiced by AI instructors, the series is designed to help listeners understand how attackers think, what they target, and how to spot threats with greater clarity.

This is valuable information for anyone in cybersecurity, especially defenders, and for anyone curious about how real-world cyberattacks start and unfold.

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CyberBrief Project

The Self-Healing Hack: Hiding in Plain Sight

August 08, 2025 • Meni Tasa • Season 1 • Episode 7

"Send me a quick text"

Episode Description:

This episode exposes how attackers hide inside WordPress’s must-use plugins to create a self-healing backdoor. We explain how a loader in the wp-content/mu-plugins folder fetches a remote payload hidden with ROT-13, plants a hidden file manager in the theme directory, creates a rogue admin account, installs a malicious plugin, and locks out legitimate owners.

Defensive Actions:

Inspect wp-content/mu-plugins regularly and remove any unknown files.
Search the WordPress database wp_options table for suspicious entries such as _hdra_core.
Check the theme directory for unexpected PHP files (e.g., pricing-table-3.php).
Audit all administrator accounts; delete unknown users and reset passwords.
Keep WordPress core, themes, and plugins fully updated.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on all admin accounts.
Use file integrity monitoring tools like Wordfence, Sucuri, or server-side IDS to alert on changes in sensitive directories.

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