WordPress Sites Hacked Using Vulnerability

A critical Zero-day flaw in WordPress that was silently patched by the company before hackers have had their hands on the nasty bug to exploit millions of WordPress websites.

To ensure the security of millions of websites and its users, WordPress delayed the vulnerability disclosure for over a week and worked with security companies and hosts to install the patch, ensuring that the issue was dealt with in short order before it became public.


But even after the company's effort to protect its customers, thousands of admins did not bother to update their websites, which are still vulnerable to the critical bug and has already been exploited by hackers.

While WordPress includes a default feature that automatically updates unpatched websites, some admins running critical services disable this feature for first testing and then applying patches.

Even the news blog of famous Linux distribution OpenSUSE (news.opensuse.org) was also hacked, but restored immediately without breach of any other part of openSUSE's infrastructure.

The vulnerability resided in WordPress REST API that would lead to the creation of new flaws, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to delete pages or modify all pages on unpatched websites and redirect their visitors to malicious exploits and a large number of attacks.

The security researcher at Sucuri, who privately disclosed the flaw to WordPress, said they started noticing the attacks leveraging this bug less than 48 hours after disclosure. They noticed at least four different campaigns targeting still unpatched websites.

In one such campaign, hackers were successful in replacing the content of over 66,000 web pages with "Hacked by" messages. Rest campaigns have targeted roughly 1000 pages in total.

Besides defacing websites, such attacks appear to be carried out mostly for black hat SEO campaign in order to spread spam and gain ranking in search engine, which is also known as search engine poisoning.

So, site administrators who have not yet updated their websites to the latest WordPress release 4.7.2 are urged to patch them immediately before becoming next target of SEO spammers and hackers.Humble request to do so for your own safety.

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How To Fix Your Website When It Gets Hacked?

It's not uncommon for sites - even large ones with lots of protection - to get hacked. Security is a major problem these days. And if your site gets hacked, it can get damaged in a number of ways. You could lose all your data, or lose its ranking due to malicious activity. So while you can take periodic backups, you cannot prevent someone from hacking into your site. The best and most practical thing to do in such an event is to recover your site as fast as possible so that the effect of the attack is neutralized/minimized.

Here are some tips shared by Google for getting your website back on track after it has been hacked.

Clean up malicious scripts

Hackers can target your site for any number of motives. From taking down your website and deleting its content to simply adding backlinks discreetly, there's a lot that can be done. If you notice suspicious content appearing on your website, delete those unnecessary pages immediately. However, don't just stop there.

Hackers will often insert malicious scripts into your HTML and PHP files. These could automatically be creating rogue backlinks or even new pages. Make sure you check your website's source code and see for any malicious PHP or JavaScript code that could be creating such content.

Maintain your CMS

Websites often get hacked due to vulnerabilities in a CMS that get patched with updates. If you're running an older version, your site is more susceptible to attack. Make sure you keep your CMS updated, and use a strong password for login. If possible, enable two-step verification to secure the login process.

www vs. non-www

www and non-www URLs are not the same. http://www.example.com is not the same as http://example.com - the former refers to a sub-domain 'www', whereas the latter is the root of your site. When checking for malicious content, verify the non-www version of your site as hackers often try to hide content in folders that may be overlooked by the webmaster

Other useful security tips

• Avoid using FTP when transferring files to your servers. FTP does not encrypt any traffic, including passwords. Instead, use SFTP, which will encrypt everything, including your password, as a protection against eavesdroppers examining network traffic.
• Check the permissions on sensitive files like .htaccess. Your hosting provider may be able to assist you if you need help. The .htaccess file can be used to improve and protect your site, but it can also be used for malicious hacks if they are able to gain access to it.
• Be vigilant and look for new and unfamiliar users in your administrative panel and any other place where there may be users that can modify your site.

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