E-commerce sites like WooCommerce or payment infrastructures like Stripe have been targeted by attackers. recently The researchers of web security company Sucuri detected an attack on WooCommerce in the previous days. Credit card swipers had hidden malicious JavaScript code inside a system file in WordPress websites using the WooCommerce plugin.
E-commerce skimming attacks
Ecommerce platforms are one of the major targets for cybercriminals. Several types of attacks have been developed for obtaining customer credit card details. In the last three years, e-commerce skimming is the most preferred method for hackers. Several large companies using the Magento e-commerce platform being hit by a malware called Magecart, which already netted huge sums.
The objective of e-commerce skimming attacks is to exploit a security weakness to embed malicious code on payments systems, capturing the credit card details of the customers. While customers are getting the services or the products they paid for, on the background, the criminals have already captured the data they need to commit card fraud.
Unusual but not seen the first time
The usual way to attack e-commerce systems is to involve appending code at the end of a file. In this incident, attackers added and required on line 5988 of the ./wp-includes/functions.php file along with one added line of code. The source of this attack could have been a compromised WordPress admin account, SFTP password, hosting password, or some other vulnerable software in the environment.
Although it is a usual method of a cyberattack on e-commerce systems, Sucuri researcher Ben Martin said that this isn’t the only time he’s seen it. Ben Martin advises WordPress users to disable direct file editing for wp-admin by adding the following line to their wp-config.php file.
define( ‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true );
In addition to limit login attempts and using two-factor authentication, to keep the WordPress and the WooCommerce plugins up to date is especially important.