My site got hacked two days ago, with the same error code showing up:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in …/public_html/index.php on line 1
Fortunately, someone at my hosting company cleared it all up for me, disabled all the plugins, and my theme needed to be uploaded again.
He said it looked like the hack happened through a plugin – one that wasn’t updated recently and offered a security hole because no one was keeping an eye on it. So, from now on, I’m only using plugins with recent updates!
Everything’s working fine now. Hope this helps!
