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A new malware campaign is leveraging a high-severity security flaw in the Popup Builder plugin for WordPress to inject malicious JavaScript code. According to Sucuri, the campaign has  infected more than 3,900 sites  over the past three weeks. "These attacks are orchestrated from domains less than a month old, with registrations dating back to February 12th, 2024," security researcher Puja Srivastava  said  in a report dated March 7. Infection sequences involve the exploitation of CVE-2023-6000, a security vulnerability in Popup Builder that could be exploited to create rogue admin users and install arbitrary plugins. The shortcoming was exploited as part of a  Balada Injector campaign  earlier this January, compromising no less than 7,000 sites. The latest set of attacks lead to the injection of malicious code, which comes in two different variants and is designed to redirect site visitors to other sites such as phishing and scam pages. WordPress site owners are reco

An in-depth look into a proactive website security solution that continuously detects, prioritizes, and validates web threats, helping to mitigate security, privacy, and compliance risks.  Reflectiz  shields websites from client-side attacks, supply chain risks, data breaches, privacy violations, and compliance issues. You Can't Protect What You Can't See Today's websites are connected to dozens of third-party web apps, trackers, and open-source tools like pixels, tag managers, and JavaScript frameworks. Some of these elements are stored on public CDNs, while others are loaded from third-party web servers that may be unfamiliar. These external web components and data items are not always visible to standard security controls, and they often expose you to security threats such as supply chain risks, client-side attacks, and vulnerabilities in your online software. This means that these serious challenges will frequently go unnoticed. Moreover, security and privacy regulations like G

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in a popular WordPress plugin called  Ultimate Member  that has more than 200,000 active installations. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1071, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10. Security researcher Christiaan Swiers has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. In an advisory published last week, WordPress security company Wordfence  said  the plugin is "vulnerable to SQL Injection via the 'sorting' parameter in versions 2.1.3 to 2.8.2 due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query." As a result, unauthenticated attackers could take advantage of the flaw to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries and extract sensitive data from the database. It's worth noting that the issue only affects users who have checked the "Enable custom table for usermeta" option in the plugin settings.

A critical security flaw in the Bricks theme for WordPress is being actively exploited by threat actors to run arbitrary PHP code on susceptible installations. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-25600 (CVSS score: 9.8), enables unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution. It impacts all versions of the Bricks up to and including 1.9.6. It has been addressed by the theme developers in  version 1.9.6.1  released on February 13, 2024, merely days after WordPress security provider Snicco reported the flaw on February 10. While a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit has not been released, technical details have been  released  by both Snicco and Patchstack, noting that the underlying vulnerable code exists in the prepare_query_vars_from_settings() function. Specifically, it concerns the use of security tokens called "nonces" for verifying permissions, which can then be used to pass arbitrary commands for execution, effectively allowing a threat actor to seize control of a

Explore how an advanced exposure management solution saved a major retail industry client from ending up on the naughty step due to a misconfiguration in its cookie management policy. This wasn't anything malicious, but with modern web environments being so complex, mistakes can happen, and non-compliance fines can be just an oversight away. Download the full case study here . As a child, did you ever get caught with your hand in the cookie jar and earn yourself a telling-off? Well, even if you can still remember being outed as a cookie monster, the punishments for today's thieving beasts are worse. Millions of dollars worse. Cookies are an essential part of modern web analytics. A cookie is a small piece of text data that records website visitor preferences along with their behaviors, and its job is to help personalize their browsing experience. Just as you needed parental consent to access the cookie jar all those years ago, your business now needs to obtain user consent before i

Thousands of WordPress sites using a vulnerable version of the Popup Builder plugin have been compromised with a malware called  Balada Injector . First  documented  by Doctor Web in January 2023, the campaign takes place in a series of periodic attack waves, weaponizing security flaws in WordPress plugins to inject backdoor designed to redirect visitors of infected sites to bogus tech support pages, fraudulent lottery wins, and push notification scams. Subsequent  findings  unearthed by Sucuri have revealed the  massive scale of the operation , which is said to have been active since 2017 and infiltrated no less than 1 million sites since then. The GoDaddy-owned website security company, which  detected  the latest Balada Injector activity on December 13, 2023, said it identified the injections on  over 7,100 sites . These attacks take advantage of a high-severity flaw in Popup Builder ( CVE-2023-6000 , CVSS score: 8.8) – a plugin with  more than 200,000 active installs  – that

WordPress has released version 6.4.2 with a patch for a critical security flaw that could be exploited by threat actors by combining it with another bug to execute arbitrary PHP code on vulnerable sites. "A remote code execution vulnerability that is not directly exploitable in core; however, the security team feels that there is a potential for high severity when combined with some plugins, especially in multisite installations," WordPress  said . According to WordPress security company Wordfence, the  issue  is rooted in the WP_HTML_Token class that was introduced in version 6.4 to improve HTML parsing in the block editor. A threat actor with the ability to exploit a PHP object injection vulnerability present in any other plugin or theme to chain the two issues to execute arbitrary code and seize control of the targeted site. "If a  POP [property-oriented programming] chain  is present via an additional plugin or theme installed on the target system, it could all

Every website owner or webmaster grapples with the issue of spam on their website forms. The volume of spam can be so overwhelming that finding useful information within it becomes quite challenging. What exacerbates this issue is that spam can populate your public pages, appearing in comments and reviews. You likely understand how this can damage your website's reputation, affect search results, overload your web server, and divert your focus from website development. Website owners and webmasters need a solution to this problem. When selecting an anti-spam solution, the following requirements should be taken into account: The solution must operate automatically, eliminating the need for manual spam checks. It should provide a quick and efficient method of accuracy control. It must be universal, protecting all website forms simultaneously. It should be easy and straightforward to install and set up. It should not require any extra steps from your visitors, ensuring they do

Gcore Radar is a quarterly report prepared by Gcore that provides insights into the current state of the DDoS protection market and cybersecurity trends. This report offers you an understanding of the evolving threat landscape and highlights the measures required to protect against attacks effectively. It serves as an insight for businesses and individuals seeking to stay informed about the latest developments in cybersecurity. As we entered 2023, the cybersecurity landscape witnessed an increase in sophisticated, high-volume attacks. Here, we present the current state of the DDoS protection market based on Gcore's statistics. Key Highlights from Q1–Q2  The maximum attack power rose from 600 to 800 Gbps. UDP flood attacks were most common and amounted to 52% of total attacks, while SYN flood accounted for 24%. In third place was TCP flood. The most-attacked business sectors are gaming, telecom, and financial. The longest attack duration in the year's first half was sev

As many as 200,000 WordPress websites are at risk of ongoing attacks exploiting a critical unpatched security vulnerability in the Ultimate Member plugin. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-3460 (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts all versions of the Ultimate Member plugin, including the latest version (2.6.6) that was released on June 29, 2023. Ultimate Member is a  popular plugin  that facilitates the creation of user-profiles and communities on WordPress sites. It also provides account management features. "This is a very serious issue: unauthenticated attackers may exploit this vulnerability to create new user accounts with administrative privileges, giving them the power to take complete control of affected sites," WordPress security firm WPScan  said  in an alert. Although details about the flaw have been withheld due to active abuse, it stems from an inadequate blocklist logic that allows attackers to alter the wp_capabilities user meta value of a new user to that of an admini

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in miniOrange's  Social Login and Register plugin  for WordPress that could enable a malicious actor to log in as any user-provided information about email address is already known. Tracked as CVE-2023-2982 (CVSS score: 9.8), the authentication bypass flaw impacts all versions of the plugin, including and prior to 7.6.4. It was addressed on June 14, 2023, with the release of version 7.6.5 following responsible disclosure on June 2, 2023. "The vulnerability makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to any account on a site including accounts used to administer the site, if the attacker knows, or can find, the associated email address," Wordfence researcher István Márton  said . The issue is rooted in the fact that the encryption key used to secure the information during login using social media accounts is hard-coded, thus leading to a scenario where attackers could create a valid request with a properl

Third-party apps such as Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, HotJar, and JQuery have become critical tools for businesses to optimize their website performance and services for a global audience. However, as their importance has grown, so has the threat of cyber incidents involving unmanaged third-party apps and open-source tools. Online businesses increasingly struggle to maintain complete visibility and control over the ever-changing third-party threat landscape, with sophisticated threats like evasive skimmers, Magecart attacks, and unlawful tracking practices potentially causing severe damage. This article explores the challenges of protecting modern websites from third-party scripts and the security risks associated with a lack of visibility over these scripts. Invisible to Standard Security Controls  Third-party scripts are often invisible to standard security controls like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) because they are loaded from external sources that are not under the control

Over one million WordPress websites are estimated to have been infected by an ongoing campaign to deploy malware called  Balada Injector   since 2017 . The massive campaign, per GoDaddy's Sucuri, "leverages all known and recently discovered theme and plugin vulnerabilities" to breach WordPress sites. The attacks are known to play out in waves once every few weeks. "This campaign is easily identified by its preference for  String.fromCharCode  obfuscation, the use of freshly registered domain names hosting malicious scripts on random subdomains, and by redirects to various scam sites," security researcher Denis Sinegubko  said . The websites include  fake tech support , fraudulent lottery wins, and rogue CAPTCHA pages urging users to turn on notifications to 'Please Allow to verify, that you are not a robot,' thereby enabling the actors to send spam ads. The report builds on  recent findings  from Doctor Web, which detailed a Linux malware family th