WordPress is extremely popular for building websites, and for good reason. It is easy to work with for most webmasters and users, and offers lots of plugins and functionality, and best of all, thousands of free themes to choose from.
However, sometimes you will choose an awesome free WordPress theme, but you or your inexperienced webmaster may not notice that instead of PHP code in the footer.php, it is populated with encrypted or obfuscated code.
There is no reason this type of code should be in a file and is usually malicious in some way. The very odd one will merely be the theme creator trying to protect a link back to their website, but why chance it? Never upload these files to your server until you replace the code with properly formatted code. You can also avoid problems by installing themes directly from the WordPress repository only.
This is one of many reasons why choosing an experienced webmaster will benefit you far more than going for the cheapest available option. You get what you pay for – with both WordPress and webmasters.
Here is a shortened version of what you may see:
<?php
eval(base64_decode(“
uWkd3NWRtTkVUbmxQUkyMVdWMHREVWVJMFYpKWU1qRjNZMFJLVm1SWFNqR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”));
?>
More WordPress security:
http://admindaily.com/secure-your-wordpress-site-part1.html
http://www.woothemes.com/2013/09/improve-your-wordpress-security-with-these-10-tips/