The creators of any website bear the moral and legal responsibility for it during its entire existence. Moreover, few people know that if a corporate web server gets hacked, its not only the company and its customers that may suffer; often, a hacked site becomes a platform for launching new cyberattacks, with its show more ...
owners not even being aware of it. Why websites get hacked A website hack can be part of a larger cyberattack, or a standalone operation. By hack, we mean making changes to the target site — not to be confused with a DDoS attack. If your company finds itself in the crosshairs of hackers, their goals are usually to: Exert pressure on the victim organization as part of a ransomware attack, including by making the hack known to customers and partners; Download valuable information from the site, for example, customer contact details stored in a database; Distract IT and InfoSec teams from a more serious data theft or sabotage attack occurring at the same time; Cause reputational damage. That said, very often hackers dont need your site in particular. Theyll happily make do with any reputable site they can sneak malicious content onto. Once thats achieved, they can populate the site with phishing pages, links to spam resources, and pop-up ads. Basically, it turns into a cybercriminal tool. At the same time, the main sections of the site may be unaffected. Customers and employees visiting the home page wont notice anything different. The malicious content is tucked away in new subfolders to which victims get lured through direct links. How websites get hacked Website hacks are normally carried out through vulnerabilities in server applications: web servers, databases, or content management systems and their add-ons. Around 43% of all websites on the internet run on WordPress, so its no surprise that hackers pay special attention to this content management system. Vulnerabilities are discovered in WordPress and thousands of add-ons for it regularly, and not all authors get around to fixing their plug-ins. And besides, not all users promptly install updates for their sites. Attackers can exploit a vulnerability to upload to the web server a so-called web shell; that is, additional files and scripts allowing them to manage site content while bypassing standard administration tools. Next, they place malicious content on the site in subfolders, taking pains not to affect the main pages of the legitimate site. Another common hacking scenario is to guess the administrator password. This is possible if the administrator uses weak passwords, or the same password on different web resources. In this way, cybercriminals can place malicious content by means of standard administration tools, creating new users on the site, as well as additional subsections or pages. However, this increases the likelihood of detection, so even in this case, attackers prefer to install their own backdoor in the shape of a web shell. Damage from website hacking In case of a large case targeted attack, the given company immediately suffers financial and reputational damage. As for opportunistic attacks, the harm is indirect. Website maintenance costs can increase due to spam content and its views. At the same time, the sites SEO reputation drops, so it gets fewer visitors from search engines. The site may even be flagged as malicious, in which case its traffic drops catastrophically. In practice, however, hackers may go for abandoned sites, so issues with traffic are of no relevance. How websites get abandoned The internet has long turned into a website graveyard. According to statistics, there are more than 1.1 billion websites in total, but 82% of them are not updated or maintained. In the case of corporate websites, a number of scenarios can be the cause: A company ceases to operate, but its website is published on free hosting and keeps running; The only employee who had access to the site leaves the given small business. Unless the owners take action, the site will remain frozen for months or even years; A company rebrands or merges, but keeps the old website temporarily for customers. The revamped entity then gets a brand-new site, and the temporary old one is gradually forgotten; A dedicated site is launched for a marketing campaign, product line, blog, or side project. When the project is over, the site is no longer updated, but its not shut down either. Signs of website hacking Since the main pages are often left untouched by hackers, it can be difficult to tell if your site has been compromised. But there are some pointers: the site is running slower than usual; traffic has sharply increased or decreased for no apparent reason; new links or banners have appeared out of nowhere; problems with control panel access; new folders, files, or users can be seen in the control panel. Still, the most obvious sign is if others start bombarding you with complaints about malicious content on your site. To properly diagnose the situation, you need to study the web server logs, but this task is better entrusted to experts. Like pest control, it takes experience to get rid of an infestation — which here means removing the web shell and other backdoors from the site. How to guard against website hacking Even small companies without a large cybersecurity budget can implement simple measures that greatly reduce the chances of getting hacked: Set long, strong passwords for the administration section of your site, and enable two-factor authentication. Each administrator must have their own password; Never allow just one person to have access to the site (unless the company has just one employee, naturally). Remember to revoke access when employees leave; Make sure to keep updated all software components of the site, including the operating system, web server, databases, content management system, and add-ons. Install updates as soon as they are released. If your company lacks the time or expertise, better to use professional website hosting where security is in the hands of a dedicated team. For example, for WordPress there are specialized secure hosting platforms, such as WP Engine; Maintain a registry of all company websites. It should list every site created, even temporary ones set up, say, for a one-month ad campaign; Each site in the registry should have its software components updated regularly, even if theres no business need to update the content; If the site is no longer needed, and the resources are lacking to update it, better to close it down in a tidy manner. Save the data to an archive, then terminate your hosting account. If necessary, you can also cancel the domain delegation. Another way to shut down a subsite is to remove all content from it, disable any software add-ons like WordPress, and set up redirection to the companys main site.
To benefit from AI yet minimize risk, companies should be cautious about information they share, be aware of AI's limitations, and stay vigilant about business implications.
Though security leaders and chief data officers both care about data management, their different missions have created a tension that needs addressing.
The former hacker and Twitter security executive will use his role to help fulfill the Biden administration's plans for the National Cybersecurity Strategy.
Threat actors convince employees to reset MFA for Super Admin accounts in the IAM service to leverage compromised accounts, impersonating users and moving laterally within an organization.
Following coups in some African nations, Russia is exploiting the instability with the manipulation of media channels to stoke anti-French sentiment, among other things.
An unknown threat actor has been observed weaponizing high-severity security flaws in the MinIO high-performance object storage system to achieve unauthorized code execution on affected servers.
An Iranian-focused hacking group known as Black Reward, with a history of going after the Iranian government, announced a new attack late Thursday, this time targeting a financial services app used by millions of Iranians for digital transactions.
While the supplier, Zaun, said it believed that no classified information was downloaded, reports indicated that attackers were able to obtain data that could be used to gain access to some of the UK's most sensitive military and research sites.
Quite some money can be made from selling compromised business and ad accounts on social media platforms, and the threat actor behind Ducktail has specialized in just that.
Meta has disclosed that it disrupted two of the largest known covert influence operations in the world from China and Russia, blocking thousands of accounts and pages across its platform.
About 650,000 customers have been impacted. The information exposed included personal data, health information, condition details, financial information, contact details, Social Security numbers, and insurance details.
The contests mirror legitimate security conference ‘Call For Papers’ and provide the winners considerable financial rewards, recognition from peers, and also, potential jobs.
Chief audit executives (CAEs) have identified risk orientation, stakeholder management, and team leadership as the top three characteristics of the most effective individuals, according to Gartner.
EternalBlue exploits a vulnerability in the Microsoft implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol. This dupes an unpatched Windows machine into allowing illegitimate data packets into the legitimate network.
The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) announced today that an ongoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has been impacting its website since Friday.
The Australian government is aware of the data breach as well as potential incidents affecting real estate firm Barry Plant and owners corporation management company Strata Plan, national cybersecurity coordinator Darren Goldie said in a statement.
Highgate Wood School in Crouch End will now begin accepting pupils on September 11 rather than September 5 as originally intended. The secondary school, which serves local students aged 11–16, appears to have escaped the worst of the attack.
This new variant, primarily targeting logistics and financial sectors, has undergone significant changes, including being rewritten in Python, enhanced communication protocols, and new modules.
Some of the malware families employed by Andariel in its attacks include Gh0st RAT, DTrack, YamaBot, NukeSped, Rifdoor, Phandoor, Andarat, Andaratm, TigerRAT (and its successor MagicRAT), and EarlyRAT.
Debian Linux Security Advisory 5489-1 - A buffer overflow was found in file, a file type classification tool, which may result in denial of service if a specially crafted file is processed.
WordPress Media Library Assistant plugin versions prior to 3.10 are affected by an unauthenticated remote reference to Imagick() conversion which allows attacker to perform local file inclusion and remote code execution depending on the Imagick configuration on the remote server.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4972-01 - Multicluster Engine for Kubernetes 2.1.8 images Multicluster engine for Kubernetes provides the foundational components that are necessary for the centralized management of multiple Kubernetes-based clusters across data centers, public clouds, and private clouds. You can use show more ...
the engine to create new Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters or to bring existing Kubernetes-based clusters under management by importing them. After the clusters are managed, you can use the APIs that are provided by the engine to distribute configuration based on placement policy. Issues addressed include a bypass vulnerability.
Remote attackers can steal valid authentication session identifiers of Hikvision Access Control/Intercom Products. This is possible because a remote attacker can create a session identifier without restrictions. If an attacker requests a session ID at the same time as a valid user, the attacker receives the identical show more ...
session ID. This session ID is immediately recognized as valid after successful authentication of the correct user.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4961-01 - The kernel-rt packages provide the Real Time Linux Kernel, which enables fine-tuning for systems with extremely high determinism requirements. Issues addressed include out of bounds access, out of bounds write, and use-after-free vulnerabilities.
Ubuntu Security Notice 6336-1 - It was discovered that Docker Registry incorrectly handled certain crafted input, A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It was discovered that Docker Registry incorrectly handled certain crafted input. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service.
Internet Radio auna IR-160 SE using the UIProto firmware suffers from missing authentication, cross site scripting, and denial of service vulnerabilities.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4971-01 - Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides an enterprise framework for building, deploying and managing IT automation at scale. IT Managers can provide top-down guidelines on how automation is applied to individual teams, while automation developers retain the freedom to show more ...
write tasks that leverage existing knowledge without the overhead. Ansible Automation Platform makes it possible for users across an organization to share, vet, and manage automation content by means of a simple, powerful, and agentless language.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4967-01 - This is a kernel live patch module which is automatically loaded by the RPM post-install script to modify the code of a running kernel. Issues addressed include out of bounds write and use-after-free vulnerabilities.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4962-01 - The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system. Issues addressed include out of bounds access, out of bounds write, and use-after-free vulnerabilities.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4955-01 - Mozilla Thunderbird is a standalone mail and newsgroup client. This update upgrades Thunderbird to version 102.15.0.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4946-01 - Mozilla Thunderbird is a standalone mail and newsgroup client. This update upgrades Thunderbird to version 102.15.0.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4956-01 - Mozilla Thunderbird is a standalone mail and newsgroup client. This update upgrades Thunderbird to version 102.15.0.
Ubuntu Security Notice 6337-1 - It was discovered that the netlink implementation in the Linux kernel did not properly validate policies when parsing attributes in some situations. An attacker could use this to cause a denial of service. Billy Jheng Bing Jhong discovered that the CIFS network file system show more ...
implementation in the Linux kernel did not properly validate arguments to ioctl in some situations. A local attacker could possibly use this to cause a denial of service.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4947-01 - Mozilla Thunderbird is a standalone mail and newsgroup client. This update upgrades Thunderbird to version 102.15.0.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4948-01 - Mozilla Thunderbird is a standalone mail and newsgroup client. This update upgrades Thunderbird to version 102.15.0.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4945-01 - Mozilla Thunderbird is a standalone mail and newsgroup client. This update upgrades Thunderbird to version 102.15.0.
Red Hat Security Advisory 2023-4950-01 - Mozilla Firefox is an open-source web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance, and portability. This update upgrades Firefox to version 102.15.0 ESR.
Meta has disclosed that it disrupted two of the largest known covert influence operations in the world from China and Russia, blocking thousands of accounts and pages across its platform. “It targeted more than 50 apps, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, Blogspot, LiveJournal, VKontakte, Vimeo, and dozens of smaller platforms and
Banking and logistics industries are under the onslaught of a reworked variant of a malware called Chaes. "It has undergone major overhauls: from being rewritten entirely in Python, which resulted in lower detection rates by traditional defense systems, to a comprehensive redesign and an enhanced communication protocol," Morphisec said in a new detailed technical write-up shared with The Hacker
In today's digital age, it's not just about being online but how securely your organization operates online. Regardless of size or industry, every organization heavily depends on digital assets. The digital realm is where business takes place, from financial transactions to confidential data storage. While organizations have quickly adopted tools like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA),
IBM's 2023 installment of their annual "Cost of a Breach" report has thrown up some interesting trends. Of course, breaches being costly is no longer news at this stage! What’s interesting is the difference in how organizations respond to threats and which technologies are helping reduce the costs associated with every IT team’s nightmare scenario. The average cost of a breach rose once again
The North Korean threat actor known as Andariel has been observed employing an arsenal of malicious tools in its cyber assaults against corporations and organizations in the southern counterpart. “One characteristic of the attacks identified in 2023 is that there are numerous malware strains developed in the Go language,” the AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC) said in a deep dive
An updated version of a malware loader known as BLISTER is being used as part of SocGholish infection chains to distribute an open-source command-and-control (C2) framework called Mythic. “New BLISTER update includes keying feature that allows for precise targeting of victim networks and lowers exposure within VM/sandbox environments,” Elastic Security Labs researchers Salim Bitam and Daniel