Sansec Threat Research & News

2023-11-10 Cybercriminals in eCommerce are diversifying their targets, now aiming at entire customer databases instead of just stealing credit cards. A recent incident revealed this trend: a hacked Magento ad...

2023-08-22 Attackers are devising ingenious methods to prolong their skimming activities, aiming for sustained persistence. The usual tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) include the creation of disposab...

2023-05-09 The domain gtag-analytics.com has recently emerged as a threat, employing various cunning techniques to evade detection and targeting unsuspecting users, but what makes it especially deceptive is i...

2023-02-07 Sansec discovered that one in nine online stores accidentally expose private backups*. This mistake could have dire consequences. Online criminals are actively scanning for these backups, as they ...

2023-01-17 Magento and Adobe Commerce stores around the world have been hammered with Trojan Order attacks this winter. And even if you have patched or installed Adobe’s 2.4.4 release, you may still be vulner...

2022-12-21 Are your Magento admin accounts legitimate? Chances are, that a klaviyo_support_XXXX account was added this week. Best to quickly remove it and read the rest of this article. Magento 2 template hac...

2022-11-15 At least seven Magecart groups are injecting TrojanOrders at approximately 38% of Magento and Adobe Commerce websites in November. After a quiet summer, the number of attacks targeting the mail tem...

2022-11-07 Sansec has received reports of criminals trying to extort Magento merchants with the message below. As long as the sender does not produce evidence, they almost certainly did not steal your sensiti...

2022-09-22 The critical template vulnerability in Magento 2 (CVE-2022-24086) is gaining popularity among eCommerce cyber criminals. The majority of recent Sansec forensic cases concern this attack method. In ...

2022-09-13 Fishpig, a vendor of popular Magento-Wordpress integrations, has been hacked. Sansec found that attackers have injected malware in Fishpig software and taken control of Fishpig servers. Online stor...

2022-02-14 Update Feb 21st, 2022: Sansec has observed the first actual attacks in the wild. Patch now! Unfortunately, this validates our previous prediction that abuse would start within days. Attacks are com...

2022-02-08 An investigative report by Sansec researchers on how one vulnerable Magento extension leads to a mass web store attack, with Magecart attackers using naturalfreshmall.com to hide and serve malware ...

2021-12-13 Updated Dec 20th. This article describes how Magento is affected by the critical log4j vulnerability, and what you can (and should) do to prevent a hack. A critical vulnerability in the popular Log...

2021-12-01 A new parasitic malware targets the popular Nginx web server, Sansec discovered. This novel code injects itself into a host Nginx application and is nearly invisible. The parasite is used to steal ...

2021-11-24 In the run-up to Black Friday, Sansec discovered a sophisticated threat that is packed with never-seen stealth techniques. This malware, dubbed "CronRAT", hides in the Linux calendar syst...

2021-11-18 Sansec discovered a new malicious agent "linux_avp" that hides as system process on eCommerce servers. It is being deployed around the world since last week and takes commands from a cont...

2021-05-03 The majority of online stores have never been hacked and, as a result, take a somewhat lax approach to cybersecurity. However, no less than 20% of all online stores get hacked every year, which mea...

2021-02-18 The Google business application platform Apps Script is used to funnel stolen personal data, Sansec learned. Attackers use the reputation of the trusted Google domain script.google.com to evade mal...

2020-12-24 A new type of web skimmer was found on a dozen stores hosted on Shopify, BigCommerce, Zen Cart and WooCommerce. Hosted (SaaS) ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify do not allow custom J...

2020-12-18 Sansec discovered a clever remote access trojan (RAT) that has been hiding in the alleys of hacked eCommerce servers. Despite the advanced setup, perpetrators mistakenly left a list of victim store...

2020-12-02 Over the last months, hackers have quietly added a subtle security flaw to over 50 large online stores, only to exploit them right before Black Friday, Sansec research shows. The flaw's presence wo...

2020-11-26 Researchers at Sansec have uncovered a novel technique to inject payment skimmers onto checkout pages. This new malware has two parts: a concealed payload and a decoder, of which the latter reads t...

2020-09-14 Update Sept 18: Cardbleed has infected 2806 Magento1 stores so far (3% of total install base) Over the weekend, almost two thousand Magento 1 stores across the world have been hacked in the largest...

2020-07-06 North Korean state sponsored hackers are implicated in the interception of online payments from American and European shoppers, Sansec research shows. Hackers associated with the APT Lazarus/HIDDEN...

2020-06-22 A newly discovered skimming campaign runs entirely on Google servers, Sansec research shows. The novel malware sends stolen credit cards directly to Google Analytics, evading security controls like...

2020-06-15 While an international retail chain closed its physical stores, attackers hacked its online presence, Sansec research shows. Following common Magecart malpractice, payment skimmers were injected an...

2020-05-28 Over a 100 thousands Magento 1 stores will be running after Adobe terminates support in June (end-of-life). Many merchants need more time to transition to Magento 2 or another platform. No need to ...

2020-05-08 Magento 1 will no longer receive official updates & security fixes per July 1st, 2020 (the end-of-life, or EOL date). Merchants are urged to upgrade to Magento 2, but for many stores this deadl...

2020-02-25 Sansec, a global leader in eCommerce security, reveals that hackers successfully infiltrated an online printing platform for more than two and a half years. Our research shows that crooks ran keylo...

2020-02-20 Utrecht, February 20; Sansec is proud to announce that it has formed a long-term strategic partnership with maxcluster to bring its industry-leading anti-malware technology to the German e-commerce...

2020-01-25 The Indonesian police announced on Friday that they have arrested three alleged Magecart hackers on December 20th. The suspects are from Jakarta and Yogyakarta and are 23, 26 and 35 years old. Afte...

2019-12-02 Payment skimmers are hiding their malpractice by impersonating our Sansec anti-skimming service. They have registered malicious domains sansec.us and sanguinelab.net, even using a fake address in A...

2019-10-25 Digital skimming groups (aka Magecart) hit another low, as they successfully targeted the American Cancer Society last night. Our skimmer detectors found a piece of malicious code embedded on the C...

2019-10-07 The store of a US Magento extension vendor was found compromised. Attackers had write access to the server selling extensions. We are awaiting a statement on the integrity of downloaded software. O...

2019-08-17 The FBI warns small and medium-sized businesses and government agencies against the threat of e-skimming. E-skimming occurs when cyber criminals inject malicious code onto a website. Read the origi...

2019-08-12 Cementing itself as a global force in the protection against eCommerce fraud, Sansec has been invited to speak at the fifth edition of Europol’s Training Course on Payment Card Fraud Forensic Inves...

2019-08-01 The PCI Security Standards Council and the Retail & Hospitality ISAC alert merchants to the threat of digital skimming. In its report, it quotes Sansec research, which has found that about 20% ...

2019-05-10 The number of hacked Magento 2 stores spiked in the last four weeks, after a critical security flaw was discovered in March and criminals stole admin passwords within 16 hours. Merchants are advise...

2019-04-29 On April 25th, sports brand Puma Australia got infected with the most sophisticated payment skimmer to date. After the NBA Hawks got skimmed last week, this time Puma's Australian customers are can...

2019-04-29 Sansec discovered a polymorphic skimmer that works with 57 different payment gateways. It has global reach, affecting payment systems from Germany to Brazil. It is by far the most advanced skimmer ...

2019-04-24 Online credit card thieves - also known as Magecart - have managed to inject a payment skimmer in the online store of the Atlanta Hawks. Fans who ordered merchandize on or after April 20th had the...

2019-01-29 In October last year I discovered several Magento extension 0days. As it turns out, this was only the tip of the iceberg: today, insecure 3rd party extensions are used to hack into thousands of sto...

2019-01-20 This week I discovered that large ecommerce and government sites got hacked via the Adminer database tool. As it turns out, the root cause is a protocol flaw in MySQL. Curiously, it is described in...

2019-01-17 Update 2019-01-20: the root cause is a protocol flaw in MySQL. Adminer is a popular PHP tool to administer MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. However, it can be lured to disclose arbitrary files. Atta...

2018-11-20 Skimmers found to subtly sabotage each others fraud operations Competition is grim in the online skimming business (aka "MageCart"). The aggressive MagentoCore skimmer was previously obs...

2018-11-12 1 in 5 compromised merchants get reinfected, average skimming operation lasts 13 days MageCart, the notorious actors behind massive online card skimming, has been busy. And so have we: our crawlers...

2018-10-30 Update Nov 23rd: Webgility has released a patch and a public statement, urging all customers to upgrade to version 345. Update Nov 30th: Webgility has discovered another security issue and urges ...

2018-10-23 Online credit card theft has been all over the news: criminals inject hidden card stealers on legitimate checkout pages. But how are they are able to inject anything in the first place? As it turn...

2018-10-15 The store of German political party CSU (www.csu-shop.de) contains an identity skimmer that was planted on or before Oct 5th, right before the Bavarian election on Oct 14th. Personal identifyable ...

2018-10-04 Back in 2016, Magecart skimmers would evade detection by sleeping if any developer tools were found running. Then, their malware would 404 without correct Referer or User-Agent header. And now, Ma...

2018-09-18 While Filipinos are recovering from typhoon Mangkhut, another misfortune awaits them online. I found their broadcasting giant ABS-CBN − a $740 million conglomerate & top-500 global Internet des...

2018-09-06 Would you - a webdeveloper - get alarmed if you found the following code on your website? Probably not, as Google Analytics is embedded in pretty much every website these days: <script type=&quo...

2018-08-30 A single group is responsible for planting skimmers on 7339 individual stores in the last 6 months. The MagentoCore skimmer is now the most successful to date. Update 2018-09-07: Because Google Chr...

2017-12-28 Magento merchants have recently received messages like this: Hey, I strongly recommend you to make a redesign! Please contact me if you need a good designer! -- [email protected] Upon closer exa...

2017-11-07 Does your laptop get hot when visiting your favorite shop? You computer is likely mining cryptocurrencies to the benefit of a cyberthief. Cryptojacking - running crypto mining software in the brow...

2017-05-02 If you code against Akamai hosted sites, you could be rejected because your HTTP library sends request headers in the wrong order. In fact, most libraries use undefined order, as the IETF specifica...

2017-04-21 Update May 21st: a similar phishing mail circulates about a fake patch SUPEE-1798. Update Apr 22nd: added reference to Neutrino Bot and POS systems This week a mail was sent out to announce the ne...

2017-04-12 Part of a series where Magento security professionals share their case notes, so that we can ultimately distill a set of best practices, tools and workflow. Part of the job of running the MageRepo...

2017-04-07 This post shows how sophisticated Magento hacking operations have become nowadays. While investigating a bruteforced Magento store, we noticed that the hacker logged in using a curious referrer sit...

2017-02-14 Regular Javascript-based malware is normally injected in the static header or footer HTML definitions in the database. Cleaning these records used to be sufficient to get rid of the malware. But n...

2016-12-01 Visbot is one of the oldest Magecart payment skimmers: it steals customer data and credit cards. The first case was documented as early as March 2015. But being publicly discussed did not stop it ...

2016-10-11 Update Dec 1st: already 2300 stores have been fixed! Thanks to everybody who tirelessly notified and fixed stores. Online card skimming is up 69% since Nov 2015 Multiple groups involved Merchants...

2015-11-17 Criminals have secretly rewired 3,500 online stores to continuously harvest credit card numbers. The fraud can be traced back as far as May 12th 2015, so if you have bought something at one of thes...