Buggy Malware Attack on WordPress Websites by Exploiting Newly Discovered Theme & Plugin Vulnerabilities

Researchers discovered an ongoing buggy malware campaign that attempts to exploit the newly discovered vulnerabilities resides in the WordPress theme and plugin.

Cybercriminals are always curious about developing the exploits soon after the new vulnerabilities found in wide particularly sites that running under WordPress.

Attackers are cleverly changing the new domains every week by slightly modifying the obfuscation of their malicious script and evade the detection from the security implementation.

Denis Sinegubko, a security researcher from Sucuri uncovered that the attackers initiate the malware campaign from following new domains which were created between 19-21 September.

* dns.createrelativechanging[.]com 
* bes.belaterbewasthere[.]com 

There are different types of obfuscation methods used by attackers in the new wave of a malware campaign nad is using the code infection technique to implant the malicious script into the targeted websites.

Researchers have roughly collected nearly 89 sites with this buggy code indexed by PublicWWW.

Latest Injections

New research found a malicious script from one of the infected websites has tried to exploit the Rich Reviews plugin.

According to Sucuri research” we find a more elaborate obfuscation method that uses random variable names and comments inside the character code array. “

Another obfuscation method, an injection script executes an XSS exploit code for logged in users that attempts to change the site URL and home options.

“These two types of obfuscation were clearly not enough for the bad actors, however. researchers also noticed a number of other obfuscation methods used in this new wave of campaign.”

Researchers clarified that the bug in the Javascript code isn’t working doesn’t mean that webmasters should ignore this threat, but it is a clear indication of those sites are vulnerable for future attacks and not attempt most likely be successful.

If you find any sign in your WordPress site that infected with malware, you need to immediately clean it and harden the site to prevent future attacks.

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