IonCube loader is a PHP extension for decoding secured and encrypted PHP files at runtime. It is free and you can install it quite easily, adding just a single line in the PHP configuration (php.ini) file. The benefits you get by adding a single line in your PHP configuration file are uncomparable to the time you need to do it. It’s worth it, it won’t take up too much of your time, and it’s easy to do, especially if you follow our tutorial.

Follow the steps in this tutorial and to install ionCube Loader on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS. The instructions are quite similar for other Debian-based distros.

Login to your Ubuntu 16.04 VPS as user root:

ssh root@IP_Address

and update all packages that are installed on your server:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Download the latest version of Ioncube Loader.

If your system is the 64-bit version, download the following package:

wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz

Unpack the downloaded tar archive:

tar xfz ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz

If you are using a 32-bit system, download the package below:

wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86.tar.gz

And unpack the archive:

tar xfz ioncube_loaders_lin_x86.tar.gz

Several ‘ioncube_loader’ files will be unpacked in a new ‘ioncube’ directory. We need the appropriate files for the PHP version installed on the server. On our test server we have PHP version 7 installed, so we will need the ‘ioncube_loader_lin_7.0.so’ file. Based on the version you are using, you may need a different file.

Now, in order to enable IonCube Loader, we have to modify the PHP configuration file. We can locate this file by executing the following command:

php --ini |grep Loaded
Loaded Configuration File:         /etc/php.ini

So, in this case, we will have to edit the ‘/etc/php.ini’ file.

Before editing this file, we have to find the location of the extensions directory. We can achieve this by executing the following command:

php -i |grep extension_dir
extension_dir => /usr/lib/php/20151012 => /usr/lib/php/20151012

Change the current working directory to the one extracted from the downloaded tar archive and copy the appropriate IonCube Loader file to the extensions directory:

cd ioncube
cp ioncube_loader_lin_7.0.so /usr/lib/php/20151012

Open the php.ini file with your favorite text editor:

vim /etc/php.ini

and add the following line at the top of the file:

zend_extension = "/usr/lib/php/20151012/ioncube_loader_lin_7.0.so"

Save the configuration file and restart the Apache web server for the changes to take effect.

systemctl restart apache2

That should be all, with this step IonCube Loader is successfully installed on your Ubuntu server. You can test this by executing ‘php -v’

php -v
PHP 7.0.15-0ubuntu0.16.04.4 (cli) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader (enabled) + Intrusion Protection from ioncube24.com (unconfigured) v6.0.8, Copyright (c) 2002-2015, by ionCube Ltd.

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