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Thousands of WordPress sites redirecting users to dangerous domains

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Over 900,000 WordPress sites take been targeted in a new attack campaign which aims to redirect visitors to malvertising sites or plant backdoors into a theme'southward header if an ambassador is logged in.

The bulk of these attacks appear to be the work of a single threat player based on the malicious JavaScript payload they are attempting to inject in vulnerable sites. The assailant as well leveraged older vulnerabilities that allowed them to change a site's abode URL to the same domain used in the cantankerous-site scripting (XSS) payload in order to redirect visitors to malvertising sites.

In a web log post, Senior QA at Defiant, Ram Gall provided further insight on the sheer calibration of the campaign, maxim:

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"While our records testify that this threat actor may have sent out a smaller volume of attacks in the past, it'due south only in the by few days that they've truly ramped up, to the point where more than 20 million attacks were attempted confronting more than one-half a one thousand thousand private sites on May 3, 2020. Over the course of the past month in total, nosotros've detected over 24,000 distinct IP addresses sending requests matching these attacks to over 900,000 sites."

Targeting older WordPress vulnerabilities

Co-ordinate to Gall, the assaulter targeted multiple vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins that have either been removed from official repositories or patched within the terminal few years.

More than than half of all of the attacks targeted sites with the Easy2Map plugin which contains an XSS vulnerability. Although the plugin was removed from the WordPress repository in Baronial of 2019, it is even so installed on less than 3,000 sites. The assaulter also exploited an XSS vulnerability in the Blog Designer plugin that was patched in 2019 and the Newspaper theme that was patched in 2016.

In order to alter a site's dwelling URL, the assailant took advantage of an options update vulnerability in the WP GDPR Compliance and Total Donations plugins. WP GDPR Compliance has more than 100,000 installations but Defiant estimates that no more than five,000 vulnerable installations remain. Total Donations on the other paw was permanently removed from the Envato Marketplace in early 2019 and information technology is estimated that less than i,000 total installations remain.

If your site uses any of these plugins or themes, it is highly recommended that you lot update them immediately and remove any that are no longer in the official WordPress repository.

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Via BleepingComputer

After getting his start at ITProPortal while living in South Korea, Anthony now writes nigh cybersecurity, web hosting, deject services, VPNs and software for TechRadar Pro. In addition to writing the news, he likewise edits and uploads reviews and features and tests numerous VPNs from his habitation in Houston, Texas. Recently, Anthony has taken a closer look at standing desks, office chairs and all sorts of other piece of work from home essentials. When non working, you tin find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart habitation.