Web malware

Watch a Layer 7 DDOS Attack – WordPress Security

A few weeks back we reported on very large Layer 7 DDOS attacks within the WordPress ecosystem. Today we decided to provide you a little illustration of what that looks like. Remember, there is a big difference between Brute Force and Denial of Service attacks, this is specifically for a large DDOS attack involving 40k […] more…

Case Study: Analyzing the Origins of a DDoS Attack

Recently a client was experiencing a massive layer 7 DDOS attack, generating tens of thousands of random HTTP requests per second to the server. The architecture of the website included a cluster of three web servers responsible for handling all incoming traffic, which did little to alleviate the pressures brought about the attack. An interesting […] more…

Does Sucuri work with my host? Yes, Yes we do.

We’ve been scanning and removing malware from websites for years, and in this time frame we have seen the website security domain grow by leaps and bounds. Over the same period, the ubiquity of the internet has reached to all corners of the globe, and the number of websites worldwide has skyrocketed (estimated at 955 […] more…

SiteCheck Extended – Making It Easier to Scan Your Websites

Sucuri SiteCheck is our free website malware scanner that crawls any website to detect signs of Malware injections, SEO Spam, Blacklisting, Defacement and other similar indicators of a compromised website. It is widely used by Webmasters to verify if their sites have not been compromised or blacklisted. And now we’re extending it to other platfroms, […] more…

AdSense Blackmail – Hacking Websites for Profit

We deal with different types of malware injections and compromises everyday and the most common question our clients ask us is, “Why me? Why my small little site?” There are so many answers to this question. In some cases, someone may attack a site for fun, they may do so in the name of “Hacktivism” […] more…

PHP Callback Functions: Another Way to Hide Backdoors

We often find new techniques employed by malware authors. Some are very interesting, others are pretty funny, and then there are those that really stump us in their creativity and effectiveness. This post is about the latter. Everyone who writes code in PHP knows what the eval() function is for. It evaluates a string as […] more…

Joomla Plugin Constructor Backdoor

We recently wrote about backdoors in pirated commercial WordPress plugins. This time it will be a short post about an interesting backdoor we found in a Joomla plugin. It was so well organized that at first we didn’t realize there was a backdoor even though we knew something was wrong. Here’s what the code of […] more…

HeartBleed in the Wild

As most of you probably already know, ten days ago security Researchers disclosed a very serious vulnerability in the OpenSSL library, which is used to power HTTPS on most websites nowadays. The bug allowed an attacker to extract information that was supposed to be private, including SSL private keys, login data or any other information […] more…

Critical Update for JetPack WordPress Plugin

The Jetpack team just released a critical security update to fix a security vulnerability in the Jetpack WordPress plugin. The vulnerability allows an attacker to bypass the site’s access control and publish posts on the site. All versions of JetPack since October, 2012 (Jetpack 1.9) are vulnerable, and all users should update to version 2.9.3 […] more…

Patching The Heartbleed OpenSSL Vulnerability

Security Researchers have discovered a very serious vulnerability in the OpenSSL library that is used to power HTTPS on most websites. Many news sources are now covering the story, and we recommend reading their articles to understand the scope of what is happening and the impact of the threat: Critical crypto bug in OpenSSL opens […] more…

Ad Violations: Why Search Engines Won’t Display Your Site If it’s Infected With Malware

As your site’s webmaster, have you ever seen an e-mail from Google like this: Hello, We wanted to alert you that one of your sites violates our advertising policies. Therefore, we won’t be able to run any of your ads that link to that site, and any new ads pointing to that site will also […] more…

Thumb Wars: Sucuri Acquires Google Webmaster Tools

Today Sucuri unofficially acquires Google Webmaster Tools. In an effort to combine forces of good, Sucuri officials challenged Google to a thumb wrestling war. Here is a breakdown of the event. Over The Top In a best-of-5 style tournament, the competition got heated. The underdog had fought well, and stayed in it to win it, […] more…

JCE Joomla Extension Attacks in the Wild

Our friends from SpiderLabs, issued a warning today on their blog about increased activity on their honeypots looking to exploit the old JCE (Joomla Content Editor) vulnerability. JCE is a very popular component that can be found enabled on almost any Joomla site. It has had a few serious vulnerabilities in the past (around 2011 […] more…

Unmasking “Free” Premium WordPress Plugins

WordPress has a large repository of free plugins (currently 30,000+) that can add almost any functionality to your blog. However, there is still a market for premium plugins. Premium plugins are especially popular when they help blogs make money: eCommerce, SEO, affiliate and customer management, and so on. Such plugins may be really great and […] more…

Windigo Linux Analysis – Ebury and Cdorked

Our friends over at ESET released a very detailed document about the Windigo Operation. The Windigo Operation has been responsible for the compromise of thousands of Linux servers over the years. When you hear terms like Ebury, CDorked, Calfbot and others, they are all related to each other. Over the last few years, our team […] more…

Security Exploit Patched on vBulletin – PHP Object Injection

The vBulletin team just issued a warning, and released patches for a security exploit that affected all versions of vBulletin including 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 4.X, 5.X. They recommend that anyone using vBulletin apply these patches as soon as possible. Here is part of their announcement: A security issue has been found that affects all […] more…

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