At Sucuri, we’re often asked how website owners and webmasters can secure their websites. However, most advice can often be too broad; different content management systems (CMS) exist in this ecosystem, and each requires a unique security configuration. This is why we have an application profiling engine in the Sucuri Firewall that adapts to the […]
Tag Archives: Website Security
Joomla! Security Best Practices: 12 Ways to Keep Joomla! Secure
At Sucuri, we’re often asked how website owners and webmasters can secure their websites. However, most advice can often be too broad; different content management systems (CMS) exist in this ecosystem, and each requires a unique security configuration. This is why we have an application profiling engine in the Sucuri Firewall that adapts to the […]
The Hacker Returns: A Backdoor Edition
Once an attacker manages to hack and gain access to a target site or system, they typically work hard to maintain their access—as long as it can to help them achieve their goals. You can think of it like having an annoying party-crasher at your pool party who decides to stick around uninvited, hiding out […]
Fake SSO Used In Multi-Email Provider Phishing
Single sign-on (SSO) allows users to sign into a single account (e.g Google) and access other services like YouTube or Gmail without authenticating with a separate username and password. This feature also extends to third party services such as the popular Dropbox file sharing application, which offers users the option to access their account using […]
Fake Human Verification Spam
We recently released an update to our Labs Knowledgebase for new plugins that had been targeted during the month of July 2019. One of these newly targeted plugins was Advanced Booking Calendar — and it didn’t take long before we were receiving clean up requests for websites that had already been exploited through this plugin. […]
Misuse of WordPress update_option() function Leads to Website Infections
In the past four months, Sucuri has seen an increase in the number of plugins affected by the misuse of WordPress’ update_option() function. This function is used to update a named option/value in the options database table. If developers do not implement the permission flow correctly, attackers can gain admin access or inject arbitrary data […]
Dissecting the WordPress 5.2.3 Update
Last week, WordPress released version 5.2.3 which was a security and maintenance update, and as such, contained many security fixes. Part of our day to day work is to analyse these security releases, discover what security issue it is fixing and come up with a Proof of Concept for further internal testing. Based on our […]
How to Audit & Cleanup WordPress Plugins & Themes
In an interview with Smashing Magazine our CoFounder (now Head of Security Products at GoDaddy) Tony Perez was asked the following question. What Makes WordPress Vulnerable? “Here’s the simple answer. Old versions of WordPress, along with theme and plugin vulnerabilities, multiplied by the CMS’ popularity, with the end user thrown into the mix, make for […]
Throwback Threat Thursday: Joomla GoogleMaps Plugin SEO Spam Injection
When our tools don’t automatically detect and clean malicious code, that’s when we start our investigation process—and the majority of these research findings end up on the blog or as a Labs note. However, other times we update our tools to automatically detect and remediate the malware, then stash the code sample in our zoo […]
What is Cryptocurrency Mining Malware?
Before we get into the details of “Cryptocurrency Mining Malware”, we need to understand first what cryptocurrency is and what miners are. What is Cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrency is best thought of as digital currency and it only exists on computers. It is transferred between peers (there is no middleman like a bank). Transactions are then recorded […]
