Many webmasters may not be aware that hackers are able to maliciously redirect cPanel pages. The specific tactic we describe in this article is unique. Included are recommendations to prevent it, along with other suspicious issues, through logs kept on cPanel servers. A lot of websites owners already know about the .htaccess file (short for […]
Tag Archives: htaccess
Cloned Spam Sites in Subdirectories
In a recent post, we covered how attackers were abusing server resources to create WordPress sites in subdirectories and distribute spam. By adding a complete WordPress CMS installation into a directory and using the victim’s database structure, attackers were able to inject ads and promote their products – a very bold move. This time around, […]
Cloned Websites Stealing Google Rankings
We often speak of black hat SEO tactics and content scraping sites are just one example of such tactics. Scraping is the act of copying all content from a website using automated scripts, usually with the intention of stealing content or completely cloning the victim’s site. Lately we have been seeing quite a high numberRead […]
Hacked Websites Redirect to Porn from PDF / DOC Links
We write a lot about various blackhat SEO hacks on this blog and most of you are already familiar with such things as doorways, cloaking and SEO poisoning. This time we’ll tell you about yet another interesting black hat SEO attack that we’ve been watching for the last year. Let’s begin with symptoms: When peopleRead […]
.htaccess Tricks in Global.asa Files
As you might know a lot of hacks use Apache configuration .htaccess files to override default web site behavior: add conditional redirects, create virtual paths (e.g mod_rewrite), auto-append code to PHP scripts, etc. In the world of IIS/ASP there is also an equivalent — Global.asa files. This file contains common declarations for all ASP scripts andRead […]
Hacked Websites Redirect to Bitcoin.org
Recently, we began to notice that some hacked websites were redirecting traffic from certain browsers to the BitCoin site, bitcoin.org. What’s going on? Is Bitcoin using black hat SEO? Is their site malicious? As you can see, the hacked website doesn’t redirect to bitcoin.org directly. It first redirects to “194 .6 .233 .7/mxjbb . cgi?default“, whichRead […]
Website Malware – Curious .htaccess Conditional Redirect Case
I really enjoy when I see different types of conditional redirects on compromised sites. They are really hard to detect and always lead to interesting investigations. Take a look at this last one we identified: The curious aspect about it is the usage of a not so common .htaccess feature: variables. Most conditional injections rely […]
