Seo Egghead has evidently discovered a WP 2.3.1 vulnerability HTML-tainting attacks. (The vulnerability evidently exists in W.P 2.1). The apparent application is to inject ads into bloggers older posts; these would tend to look like paid links. The problems for you would be a potential drop in page rank.
SEO Egghead recommends bloggers check their posts for insserted links to mp3 sites he has discovered at his site, and provides a plugin for this purpose.
I may be wrong, but I think you need to use his plugin. You should be able to get the same information by clicking “manage” in your dashboard, finding the big “search box” and entering ‘adshelper’. Then, click search. WP will return a list of posts containing links to “adshelper”. Next repeat the search for ’softicana’. If both searches return zero pages, you’re clean.
While your at it: why assume these are the only hacker-advertisers? Take a little time and search for words like “mp3″, “casino”, “mortgage”, “viagra” and anything else you can dream up. If you find anything, blog about it so other bloggers can learn and check.
With luck, if my suggested method of testing useless, and you really do need to use the plugin, Seo Egghead will pop in and tell us I’m wrong. (I asked at his blog last night, and I’ll keep checking for an answer .)
Are you wondering how I did?
I seem to be ‘clean’ on both ‘adshelper’, ’softicana’ and a variety of other terms I dreamed up.
Hmmm… Plugin idea
If these sorts of HTML tainting attacks are common, I should probably write a plugin that periodically scans all blog posts for a standard set of blacklist terms, plus terms in the users own blacklist. Monthly checks at all our blogs would let us catch these things and warn others. It would be an easy plugin… hmmm….
If readers do run this test, and any come up “tainted”, I’ll seriously consider writing that plugin. Meanwhile, I need to get through updating all my existing ones first!
Guess what readibility level I rated? Yep. I write like I’m in grade school.