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In a campaign wave reported on January 25, 2023, more than 4,500 WordPress websites were infected with obfuscated JavaScript that redirected some visitors to advertising, deceptive browser-update prompts, or potentially malicious content. The report traced the latest activity to December 26, 2022, but did not identify one vulnerability or initial access method responsible for every compromise. These are historical figures and observations, not a current infection count.
What happened in the reported campaign
The Hacker News, summarizing reporting from Sucuri, said the latest wave affected more than 4,500 WordPress websites. It cited urlscan.io data for the operation’s reported start on December 26, 2022. The coverage described this as part of a longer-running campaign believed to date to at least 2017; that is a reported belief, not a confirmed start date. The Hacker News’ January 25, 2023 report is the source for these historical figures.
The same coverage described earlier activity affecting more than 3,600 sites in early December 2022 and more than 7,000 sites in an attack set recorded in September 2022. Sucuri also said it had removed changes from more than 33,000 compromised-site files in the preceding 60 days. That last number refers to files, not distinct websites.
How the redirects worked
The reported infection involved obfuscated JavaScript inserted into WordPress index.php files. The code referenced track[.]violetlovelines[.]com and initiated redirect chains that could send visitors to different destinations. The sources describe the injected code and resulting traffic direction, but do not establish how attackers initially gained access to each site.
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That distinction matters: the reporting does not show that a WordPress core vulnerability caused the campaign, nor does it identify one plugin or other entry point as the cause of every infection. A redirect in a site’s pages is evidence of a problem to investigate, not enough on its own to diagnose how the site was compromised.
What visitors could encounter
Destinations varied. Some were dubious advertising pages; others displayed misleading browser-update prompts promoting the Crystal Blocker extension. Some redirect paths could deliver Raccoon Stealer. In January 2023, SC Media’s January 26, 2023 brief also described the campaign’s reported Crystal Blocker and Raccoon Stealer risks.
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Sucuri researcher Denis Sinegubko described a change in the campaign’s approach: “In recent months, this malware campaign has gradually switched from the notorious fake CAPTCHA push notification scam pages to black hat ‘ad networks’ that alternate between redirects to legitimate, sketchy, and purely malicious websites.” The quote appeared in the January 2023 reporting by The Hacker News and SC Media.
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The Raccoon Stealer risk was conditional, not universal. The report said the malware could target passwords saved in browsers, cookies, autofill data, and cryptocurrency wallets, and that some redirect paths could retrieve it from a Discord content-delivery network. It did not say every infected website delivered the stealer or that every visitor to an affected site had their information stolen.
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The January 2023 report also put combined Crystal Blocker user counts at nearly 110,000 across Chrome, Edge, and Firefox: 60,000+ for Chrome, 40,000+ for Edge, and 8,635 for Firefox. Those were historical counts at the time of the report, not current installation figures. The available reporting does not establish whether the extension or the named domain remains active or safe today.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What WordPress site owners were advised to do
The Hacker News article’s mitigation advice was to change passwords, update installed themes and plugins, and remove themes or plugins that are unused or abandoned by their developers. These are useful maintenance actions, but the report did not present them as a complete forensic cleanup procedure or say they alone remove an infection, close a backdoor, or restore a compromised site.
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- Change passwords: Follow the report’s advice to replace passwords associated with site administration.
- Update installed themes and plugins: Apply available updates to the components the site uses.
- Remove unused or abandoned extensions: Reduce exposure from components the site no longer needs or whose developers have stopped maintaining them.
If visitors are still being redirected, those maintenance steps should not be treated as proof that the malicious code is gone. The 2023 report does not provide a full cleanup checklist, so it cannot support a claim that these actions alone will resolve an active compromise.
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