Thousands of WordPress Sites Hacked to Redirect Visitors to Scam Sites

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a enormous marketing campaign which is accountable for injecting malicious JavaScript code into compromised WordPress web sites that redirects visitors to rip-off internet pages and other malicious web sites to crank out illegitimate site visitors.

“The sites all shared a typical issue — destructive JavaScript experienced been injected within just their website’s files and the database, which includes genuine core WordPress files,” Krasimir Konov, a malware analyst at Sucuri, said in a report posted Wednesday.

This involved infecting data files these types of as jquery.min.js and jquery-migrate.min.js with obfuscated JavaScript that is activated on every web site load, enabling the attacker to redirect the site website visitors to a destination of their selection.

The GoDaddy-owned website security corporation explained that the domains at the conclusion of the redirect chain could be employed to load ads, phishing pages, malware, or even bring about an additional established of redirects.

In some occasions, unsuspecting consumers are taken to a rogue redirect landing webpage made up of a phony CAPTCHA test, clicking which serves unwanted advertisements that are disguised to look as if they come from the operating procedure and not from a web browser.

The marketing campaign — a continuation of an additional wave that was detected very last thirty day period — is considered to have impacted 322 sites so far, starting off May well 9. The April set of attacks, on the other hand, has breached above 6,500 websites.

“It has been identified that attackers are targeting various vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes to compromise the internet site and inject their malicious scripts,” Konov claimed.

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Some parts of this write-up are sourced from:
thehackernews.com