WordPress | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have exposed a new campaign that targets web servers running PHP-based applications to promote gambling platforms in Indonesia. "Over the past two months, a significant volume of attacks from Python-based bots has been observed, suggesting a coordinated effort to exploit thousands of web apps," Imperva researcher Daniel Johnston said in an analysis. "These attacks appear tied to the proliferation of gambling-related sites, potentially as a response to the heightened government scrutiny ." The Thales-owned company said it has detected millions of requests originating from a Python client that includes a command to install GSocket (aka Global Socket), an open-source tool that can be used to establish a communication channel between two machines regardless of the network perimeter. It's worth noting that GSocket has been put to use in many a cryptojacking operation in recent months, not to mention even exploiting the access provi...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a new adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing kit that's capable of Microsoft 365 accounts with an aim to steal credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes since at least October 2024. The nascent phishing kit has been dubbed Sneaky 2FA by French cybersecurity company Sekoia, which detected it in the wild in December. Nearly 100 domains hosting Sneaky 2FA phishing pages have been identified as of this month, suggesting moderate adoption by threat actors. "This kit is being sold as phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) by the cybercrime service 'Sneaky Log,' which operates through a fully-featured bot on Telegram," the company said in an analysis. "Customers reportedly receive access to a licensed obfuscated version of the source code and deploy it independently." Phishing campaigns have been observed sending payment receipt-related emails to entice recipients into opening bogus PDF documents containing QR co...

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Cybersecurity researchers have detailed an attack that involved a threat actor utilizing a Python-based backdoor to maintain persistent access to compromised endpoints and then leveraged this access to deploy the RansomHub ransomware throughout the target network. According to GuidePoint Security , initial access is said to have been facilitated by means of a JavaScript malware downloaded named SocGholish (aka FakeUpdates), which is known to be distributed via drive-by campaigns that trick unsuspecting users into downloading bogus web browser updates. Such attacks commonly involve the use of legitimate-but-infected websites that victims are redirected to from search engine results using black hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Upon execution, SocGholish establishes contact with an attacker-controlled server to retrieve secondary payloads. As recently as last year, SocGholish campaigns have targeted WordPress sites relying on outdated versions of popular SEO plug...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a new stealthy credit card skimmer campaign that targets WordPress e-commerce checkout pages by inserting malicious JavaScript code into a database table associated with the content management system (CMS). "This credit card skimmer malware targeting WordPress websites silently injects malicious JavaScript into database entries to steal sensitive payment details," Sucuri researcher Puja Srivastava said in a new analysis. "The malware activates specifically on checkout pages, either by hijacking existing payment fields or injecting a fake credit card form." The GoDaddy-owned website security company said it discovered the malware embedded into the WordPress wp_options table with the option "widget_block," thus allowing it to avoid detection by scanning tools and persist on compromised sites without attracting attention. In doing so, the idea is to insert the malicious JavaScript into an HTML block widget thr...

A now-removed GitHub repository that advertised a WordPress tool to publish posts to the online content management system (CMS) is estimated to have enabled the exfiltration of over 390,000 credentials. The malicious activity is part of a broader attack campaign undertaken by a threat actor, dubbed MUT-1244 (where MUT refers to "mysterious unattributed threat") by Datadog Security Labs, that involves phishing and several trojanized GitHub repositories hosting proof-of-concept (PoC) code for exploiting known security flaws. "Victims are believed to be offensive actors – including pentesters and security researchers, as well as malicious threat actors – and had sensitive data such as SSH private keys and AWS access keys exfiltrated," researchers Christophe Tafani-Dereeper, Matt Muir, and Adrian Korn said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News. It's no surprise that security researchers have been an attractive target for threat actors, including nation-sta...

Malicious actors are exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Hunk Companion plugin for WordPress to install other vulnerable plugins that could open the door to a variety of attacks. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-11972 (CVSS score: 9.8), affects all versions of the plugin prior to 1.9.0. The plugin has over 10,000 active installations. "This flaw poses a significant security risk, as it enables attackers to install vulnerable or closed plugins, which can then be exploited for attacks such as Remote Code Execution (RCE), SQL Injection, Cross‑Site Scripting (XSS), or even the creation of administrative backdoors," WPScan said in a report. To make matters worse, attackers could leverage outdated or abandoned plugins to circumvent security measures, tamper with database records, execute malicious scripts, and seize control of the sites. WPScan said it uncovered the security defect when analyzing an infection on an unspecified WordPress site, finding that threat actors ...

Two critical security flaws impacting the Spam protection, Anti-Spam, and FireWall plugin for WordPress could allow an unauthenticated attacker to install and enable malicious plugins on susceptible sites and potentially achieve remote code execution. The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-10542 and CVE-2024-10781 , carry a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. They were addressed in versions 6.44 and 6.45 released this month. Installed on over 200,000 WordPress sites, CleanTalk's Spam protection,f Anti-Spam, FireWall plugin is advertised as a "universal anti-spam plugin" that blocks spam comments, registrations, surveys, and more. According to Wordfence, both vulnerabilities concern an authorization bypass issue that could allow a malicious actor to install and activate arbitrary plugins. This could then pave the way for remote code execution if the activated plugin is vulnerable of its own. The plugin is "vulnerable to unauthorized Arbitrary Plugin ...

A critical authentication bypass vulnerability has been disclosed in the Really Simple Security (formerly Really Simple SSL) plugin for WordPress that, if successfully exploited, could grant an attacker to remotely gain full administrative access to a susceptible site. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-10924 (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts both free and premium versions of the plugin. The software is installed on over 4 million WordPress sites.  "The vulnerability is scriptable, meaning that it can be turned into a large-scale automated attack, targeting WordPress websites," Wordfence security researcher István Márton said . Following responsible disclosure on November 6, 2024, the shortcoming has been patched in version 9.1.2 released a week later. This risk of possible abuse has prompted the plugin maintainers to work with WordPress to force-update all sites running this plugin prior to public disclosure. According to Wordfence, the authentication bypass vulnerabilit...

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that could allow an unauthenticated threat actor to elevate their privileges and perform malicious actions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-50550 (CVSS score: 8.1), has been addressed in version 6.5.2 of the plugin. "The plugin suffers from an unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability which allows any unauthenticated visitor to gain administrator level access after which malicious plugins could be uploaded and installed," Patchstack security researcher Rafie Muhammad said in an analysis. LiteSpeed Cache is a popular site acceleration plugin for WordPress that, as the name implies, comes with advanced caching functionality and optimization features. It's installed on over six million sites. The newly identified issue, per Patchstack, is rooted in a function named is_role_simulation and is similar to an earlier flaw that was publicly documented back in August ...

The maintainers of the Jetpack WordPress plugin have released a security update to remediate a critical vulnerability that could allow logged-in users to access forms submitted by others on a site. Jetpack, owned by WordPress maker Automattic, is an all-in-one plugin that offers a comprehensive suite of tools to improve site safety, performance, and traffic growth. It's used on 27 million WordPress sites, according to its website . The issue is said to have been identified by Jetpack during an internal security audit and has persisted since version 3.9.9, released in 2016. The vulnerability resides in the Contact Form feature in Jetpack, and "could be used by any logged in users on a site to read forms submitted by visitors on the site," Jetpack's Jeremy Herve said . Jetpack said it's worked closely with the WordPress.org Security Team to automatically update the plugin to a safe version on installed sites. The shortcoming has been addressed in the followi...

A new high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that could enable malicious actors to execute arbitrary JavaScript code under certain conditions. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-47374 (CVSS score: 7.2), has been described as a stored cross-site scripting ( XSS ) vulnerability impacting all versions of the plugin up to and including 6.5.0.2. It was addressed in version 6.5.1 on September 25, 2024, following responsible disclosure by Patchstack Alliance researcher TaiYou. "It could allow any unauthenticated user from stealing sensitive information to, in this case, privilege escalation on the WordPress site by performing a single HTTP request," Patchstack said in a report.  The flaw stems from the manner in which the plugin the "X-LSCACHE-VARY-VALUE" HTTP header value is parsed without adequate sanitization and output escaping, thereby allowing for injection of arbitrary web scripts. That said, it's worth poi...

WordPress.org has announced a new account security measure that will require accounts with capabilities to update plugins and themes to activate two-factor authentication (2FA) mandatorily. The enforcement is expected to come into effect starting October 1, 2024. "Accounts with commit access can push updates and changes to plugins and themes used by millions of WordPress sites worldwide," the maintainers of the open-source, self-hosted version of the content management system (CMS) said . "Securing these accounts is essential to preventing unauthorized access and maintaining the security and trust of the WordPress.org community." Besides requiring mandatory 2FA, WordPress.org said it's introducing what's called SVN passwords, which refers to a dedicated password for committing changes. This, it said, is an effort to introduce a new layer of security by separating users' code commit access from their WordPress.org account credentials. "This ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered yet another critical security flaw in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that could allow unauthenticated users to take control of arbitrary accounts. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-44000 (CVSS score: 7.5), impacts versions before and including 6.4.1. It has been addressed in version 6.5.0.1.  "The plugin suffers from an unauthenticated account takeover vulnerability which allows any unauthenticated visitor to gain authentication access to any logged-in users and at worst can gain access to an Administrator level role after which malicious plugins could be uploaded and installed," Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad said . The discovery follows an extensive security analysis of the plugin, which previously led to the identification of a critical privilege escalation flaw ( CVE-2024-28000 , CVSS score: 9.8). LiteSpeed Cache is a popular caching plugin for the WordPress ecosystem with over 5 million active installat...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the WPML WordPress multilingual plugin that could allow authenticated users to execute arbitrary code remotely under certain circumstances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-6386 (CVSS score: 9.9), impacts all versions of the plugin before 4.6.13, which was released on August 20, 2024. Arising due to missing input validation and sanitization, the issue makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Contributor-level access and above, to execute code on the server. WPML is a popular plugin used for building multilingual WordPress sites. It has over one million active installations. Security researcher stealthcopter, who discovered and reported CVE-2024-6386, said the problem lies in the plugin's handling of shortcodes that are used to insert post content such as audio, images, and videos. "Specifically, the plugin uses Twig templates for rendering content in shortcodes but fails to properly sanitize input, leadi...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a critical security flaw in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that could permit unauthenticated users to gain administrator privileges. "The plugin suffers from an unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability which allows any unauthenticated visitor to gain Administrator level access after which malicious plugins could be uploaded and installed," Patchstack's Rafie Muhammad said in a Wednesday report. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-28000 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been patched in version 6.4 of the plugin released on August 13, 2024. It impacts all versions of the plugin, including and prior to 6.3.0.1. LiteSpeed Cache is one of the most widely used caching plugins in WordPress with over five million active installations. In a nutshell, CVE-2024-28000 makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to spoof their user ID and register as an administrative-level user, effectively granting them privileges to...

A maximum-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the WordPress GiveWP donation and fundraising plugin that exposes more than 100,000 websites to remote code execution attacks. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-5932 (CVSS score: 10.0), impacts all versions of the plugin prior to version 3.14.2, which was released on August 7, 2024. A security researcher, who goes by the online alias villu164, has been credited with discovering and reporting the issue. The plugin is "vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and including, 3.14.1 via deserialization of untrusted input from the 'give_title' parameter," Wordfence said in a report this week. "This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject a PHP Object. The additional presence of a POP chain allows attackers to execute code remotely, and to delete arbitrary files." The vulnerability is rooted in a function named "give_process_donation_form()," which is used to vali...

Threat actors have been observed using swap files in compromised websites to conceal a persistent credit card skimmer and harvest payment information. The sneaky technique, observed by Sucuri on a Magento e-commerce site's checkout page, allowed the malware to survive multiple cleanup attempts, the company said. The skimmer is designed to capture all the data into the credit card form on the website and exfiltrate the details to an attacker-controlled domain named "amazon-analytic[.]com," which was registered in February 2024. "Note the use of the brand name; this tactic of leveraging popular products and services in domain names is often used by bad actors in an attempt to evade detection," security researcher Matt Morrow said . This is just one of many defense evasion methods employed by the threat actor, which also includes the use of swap files ("bootstrap.php-swapme") to load the malicious code while keeping the original file ("bootstra...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an attack campaign that targets various Israeli entities with publicly-available frameworks like Donut and Sliver. The campaign, believed to be highly targeted in nature, "leverage target-specific infrastructure and custom WordPress websites as a payload delivery mechanism, but affect a variety of entities across unrelated verticals, and rely on well-known open-source malware," HarfangLab said in a report last week. The French company is tracking the activity under the name Supposed Grasshopper. It's a reference to an attacker-controlled server ("auth.economy-gov-il[.]com/SUPPOSED_GRASSHOPPER.bin"), to which a first-stage downloader connects to. This downloader, written in Nim, is rudimentary and is tasked with downloading the second-stage malware from the staging server. It's delivered by means of a virtual hard disk (VHD) file that's suspected to be propagated via custom WordPress sites as part of a drive-...