New web-based attack types and vectors are coming out every day, this is causing businesses, communities and individuals to take security seriously now more than they ever have in the past. This is a huge win for the World Wide Web and it’s a trend that is pushing technology further towards more robust and securely […]
Archive | Security
RSS feed for this sectionSpotting Malicious Injections in Otherwise Benign Code
Being able to spot suspicious code, and then determine whether it is benign or malicious is a very important skill for a security researcher. Every day we scan through megabytes of HTML, JS and PHP. It’s quite easy to miss something bad, especially when it doesn’t visually stick out and follows patterns of a legitimate […]
Security Advisory – Medium Severity – WP eCommerce WordPress Plugin
Advisory for: WordPress WP eCommerce Plugin Security Risk: Medium (DREAD score : 6/10) Exploitation level: Easy/Remote Vulnerability: Information leak and access control bypass. Patched Version: 3.8.14.4 If you’re using the popular WP eCommerce WordPress plugin (2,900,000 downloads), you should update it right away. During a routine audit for our Website Firewall (WAF), we found a […]
Drupal Warns – Every Drupal 7 Website was Compromised Unless Patched
The Drupal team released an update to a critical SQL Injection vulnerability a few weeks ago and urged all their users to update or patch their sites as immediately. Today the the Drupal team released a strong statement via a public service announcement: You should proceed under the assumption that every Drupal 7 website was […]
Threat Introduced via Browser Extensions
We love investigating unusual hacks. There are so many ways to compromise a website, but often it’s the same thing. When we see malicious code on web pages, our usual suspects are: Vulnerabilities in website software Trojanized software from untrusted sources (e.g. pirated themes and plugins) Stolen or brute-forced credentials (anything from FTP and SSH […]
ASP Backdoors? Sure! It’s not just about PHP
I recently came to the realization that it might appear that we’re partial to PHP and WordPress. This realization has brought about an overwhelming need to correct that perception. While they do make up an interesting percentage, there are various other platforms and languages that have similar if not more devastating implications. Take into consideration […]
Google Blacklists Bit.ly
If you ever shortened a URL using bit.ly or if you use it anywhere, be aware that Google recently blacklisted all bit.ly pages through its Safe Browsing program. It means that anyone using Chrome, Firefox or Safari will get a nasty The site ahead contains malware warning when visiting a bit.ly link: Why would Google […]
Popular Brazilian Site “Porta dos Fundos” Hacked
A very well known Brazilian comedy site, “Porta dos Fundos,” was recently hacked and is pushing malware (drive-by-download) via a malicious Flash executable, as you can see from our Sitecheck results: SiteCheck Found Malware on Porta dos Fundos If you do not want the joke to be on you, do not visit this site (portadosfundos) […]
Manipulating WordPress Plugin Functions to Inject Malware
Most authors of website malware usually rely on the same tricks making it easy for malware researchers to spot obfuscated code, random files that don’t belong, and malicious lines injected at the top of a file. However, it can become difficult when the malware is buried deep within the lines of code on normal files.. […]
The Details Behind the Akeeba Backup Vulnerability
It’s been a month since our disclosure of a low-severity vulnerability affecting Akeeba Backup version 3.11.4, which allowed an attacker to list and download backups from a target website using the extension’s JSON API. As promised, here’s the technical details describing how it was possible for us to send valid requests to the API and […]
