CryptoPHP Backdoor Hijacks Servers with Malicious Plugins & Themes
Nov 24, 2014
Security researchers have discovered thousands of backdoored plugins and themes for the popular content management systems (CMS) that could be used by attackers to compromise web servers on a large scale. The Netherlands-based security firm Fox-IT has published a whitepaper revealing a new Backdoor named "CryptoPHP . " Security researchers have uncovered malicious plugins and themes for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal . However, there is a slight relief for Drupal users, as only themes are found to be infected from CryptoPHP backdoor. In order to victimize site administrators, miscreants makes use of a simple social engineering trick. They often lured site admins to download pirated versions of commercial CMS plugins and themes for free. Once downloaded, the malicious theme or plugin included backdoor installed on the admins' server. "By publishing pirated themes and plug-ins free for anyone to use instead of having to pay for them, the CryptoPHP actor is...
