This August, we’ve seen a new massive wave of WordPress infections that redirect visitors to unwanted sites. When redirected, users see annoying pages with random utroro[.]com addresses and fake reCAPTCHA images. The messages and content try to convince visitors to verify and subscribe to browser notifications without disclosing the purpose of this behavior. Alternative redirect […]
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Fake Plugins with Popuplink.js Redirect to Scam Sites
Since July, we’ve been observing a massive WordPress infection that is responsible for unwanted redirects to scam and ad sites. This infection involves the tiny.cc URL shortener, a fake plugin that has been called either “index” or “wp_update”, and a malicious popuplink.js file. Infected pages typically have these two scripts in the section of the […]
How to Improve Your Website Posture – Part I
Have you ever wondered if your website security posture is adequate enough? The risk of having a website compromise is never going to be zero. However, as a webmaster, you can play an important role in minimizing the chances of a website hack. A good security posture entails how to understand the importance of securing […]
How to Improve Website Resilience for DDoS Attacks – Part II – Caching
In the first post of this series, we talked about the practices that will optimize your site and increase your website’s resilience to DDoS attacks. Today, we are going to focus on caching best practices that can reduce the chances of a DDoS attack bringing down your site. Website caching is a technique to store […]
Cookie Consent Script Used to Distribute Malware
Most websites today use cookies. Since May 25th, 2018, all websites that do business in the European Union (EU) had to make some changes to be compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Even though cookie usage is mentioned only once in GDPR, any organization utilizing them to track users’ browsing activity have […]
Cryptominers: Binary-Process-Cron Variants and Methods of Removal
This post provides a brief overview of how to manually remove server-side cryptominers and other types of Binary-Process-Cron malware from a server. Unlike browser-based JavaScript cryptominers that have been injected into a web page, a binary server-level cryptominer abuses server resources without affecting the computers or mobile devices of site visitors. We will cover the […]
RawGit CDN is Abused by CryptoLoot Cryptominers
Recently, we came across another way to use files from GitHub repositories in malware infections. This time the infections weren’t via GitHub.io, raw.githubusercontent.com, or github.com///raw/ URLs. The new trick involved a third-party service called RawGit that provides a CDN for GitHub files. This is the script that we found injected into .js and theme files […]
Switching to HTTPS Before It’s Too Late
Google, Mozilla, and other web authorities are pushing for website owners to adopt HTTPS. Soon, Google Chrome will start flagging sites by displaying a warning that the site is “Not secure“. Chrome 68 is already in Beta. Before long, everyone will be able to update their browsers to Chrome 68 and see “Not Secure” warnings on […]
Browser Extension Bug Leads to Post Injection
A few years ago, we saw how a browser extension introduced a threat to serve unwanted ads. Today, the number of browser extensions available to users has grown, along with the risk for this similar behavior to occur. We recently came across a similar case where several completely different websites contained what appeared to be […]
Hiding Malware Inside Images on GoogleUserContent
If you have been following our blog for a long time, you might remember us writing about malware that used EXIF data to hide its code. This technique is still in use. Let us show you a recent example. Contaminated Pac-Man This code was found at the beginning of a malicious script that steals PayPal […]
