Researchers have been monitoring a campaign in which cybercriminals compromised many ecommerce websites in an effort to steal payment card and other sensitive information provided by their customers.
The campaign, dubbed “Magecart” by cloud-based security solutions provider RiskIQ, dates back to at least March 2016 and is still active today.
Some of the attacks aimed at Magento sites were detailed in June by Sucuri, but RiskIQ determined that the attackers have been targeting other platforms as well, including Powerfront CMS and OpenCart. As for the targeted payment processing services, the list includes Braintree and VeriSign.
RiskIQ has identified more than 100 online shops from around the world hacked as part of the Magecart campaign, including ones belonging to well-known book publishers, fashion companies, and sporting equipment manufacturers. The cybercrooks even attacked the gift shop of a UK-based cancer research organization.
JavaScript code injected by the hackers into these websites captures information entered by users into purchase forms by acting as a man-in-the-middle (MitM) between the victim and the checkout page. In some cases, the malware adds bogus form fields to the page in an effort to trick victims into handing over even more information. The harvested data is exfiltrated over HTTPS to a server controlled by the attacker.
By loading the keylogger from an external source instead of injecting it directly into the compromised website, attackers can easily update the malware without the need to re-infect the site.
According to RiskIQ, the campaign peaked in June, when the cybercriminals started using an Eastern European bulletproof hosting company to store the domains that serve the malware. In the most recent attacks, experts noticed additional obfuscated script injections.
RiskIQ’s report on the Magecart campaign includes the domains used by the attacker to serve the formgrabber code, the attacker’s IP addresses, URLs injected into websites, affected sites, and advice on how merchants and administrators can prevent such incidents.
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