Every month we recap the latest posts on Sucuri Labs, written by our Malware Research Team (MRT) and Incident Response Teams (IRT). The Sucuri Labs website provides technical analysis and industry updates directly from our teams on the front line. You can read past monthly recaps for an overview of the posts we’ve released each […]
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RCE Attempts Against the Latest WordPress REST API Vulnerability
We are starting to see remote command execution (RCE) attempts trying to exploit the latest WordPress REST API Vulnerability. These RCE attempts started today after a few days of attackers (mostly defacers) rushing to vandalize as many pages as they could. The RCE attempts we are seeing in the wild do not affect every WordPress […]
JavaScript Injections Leads to Tech Support Scam
During a recent malware investigation, we found some interesting obfuscated Javascript code. This code pretends to appear as part of the popular AddThis social sharing plugin, using it in URL naming conventions and an image file. The malware ultimately redirects website visitors to node.additionsnp[.]top which hosts a tech support scam that can be dangerous to […]
WordPress REST API Vulnerability Abused in Defacement Campaigns
WordPress 4.7.2 was released two weeks ago, including a fix for a severe vulnerability in the WordPress REST API. We have been monitoring our WAF network and honeypots closely to see how and when the attackers would try to exploit this issue the wild. In less than 48 hours after the vulnerability was disclosed, we […]
Website Application Firewalls (WAF) – Practical Approach to Website Security
In 2016, I shared some thoughts about firewalls in general; their history and purpose in the information security domain. The point of the article was to help website owners differentiate between the types of firewalls they might encounter. Today, I will shift my focus specifically to website application firewalls (WAF). WAFs are not new, but […]
Content Injection Vulnerability in WordPress
As part of a vulnerability research project for our Sucuri Firewall (WAF), we have been auditing multiple open source projects looking for security issues. While working on WordPress, we discovered was a severe content injection (privilege escalation) vulnerability affecting the REST API. This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated user to modify the content of any post […]
Spotlight: Website Security Response for Photographers
It takes a lot of bravery to create a small business. Putting yourself out there and taking risks is not for the faint of heart. Having a website is just one aspect of your business, but it’s an important one. A website helps you develop a brand identity, communicate the value of your offerings, and […]
Fake bb_press Plugin Redirects to Mobile Pornography
When a website is hacked, we often find that attackers have injected multiple backdoors, web shells, and malicious code that allows them to regain access if the original vulnerability is patched. This allows hackers to continue abusing the website and server resources. One of the techniques they use is to add fake extensions that perform […]
WordPress Performance Optimization Guide
Since launching our website performance testing tool we have been getting a lot of questions about how to improve the speed and performance of WordPress websites. Many website owners are not aware how slow their sites are, so we are excited to help shed some light on the matter. There are a number of different […]
vBulletin Malware – When Hackers Compete for Backdoor Control
A common pattern we see in compromised websites is the presence of backdoors and other malicious code. During Q3 of 2016, we found that 72% of all compromises that we encountered had a PHP-based backdoor hidden within the site. Attackers experiment with various techniques and types of malware to abuse server resources and distribute spam […]
