MySQL.com Hacked: Cybercriminals Use Popular Open Source Site to Spread Malware

A malware attack targeting MySQL.com was detected today redirecting users to malicious sites hosting a notorious crimeware kit.

According to researchers at Armorize, the Oracle-owned Website was compromised today but has since been cleaned up. While the attack was underway, users who visited the site were infected and redirected to a site hosting the BlackHole exploit kit.

“(The malicious domain) exploits the visitor’s browsing platform (the browser, the browser plugins like Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF, etc, Java, …), and upon successful exploitation, permanently installs a piece of malware into the visitor’s machine, without the visitor’s knowledge,” according to the Armorize blog.

“The visitor doesn’t need to click or agree to anything; simply visiting mysql.com with a vulnerable browsing platform will result in an infection.” The attack follows reports that root access to MySQL.com was being sold in Russian cyber-forums for $3,000 US. Trend Micro Senior Threat Researcher Maxim Goncharov noted that the situation shows hackers can profit from their activities in a number of ways, not just selling stolen data.

“We are making this public to stress the fact that hackers do not only profit from selling stolen data or by inserting bad links into spammed or phishing messages, websites and other possible infection vectors,” Goncharov blogged, noting Trend had contacted MySQL.com about the forum posts last week. “In this case, whether sourcec0de’s claim is true or not, it shows how cybercriminals are so brazen as to sell admin access to specific systems, which could be negatively impacted by their break-ins.”

MySQL.com was also hit back in March, when Romanian hackers “TinKode” and “NeOh” took credit for exploiting a SQL injection flaw and subsequently posting a list of usernames and passwords online.

A video of the hack in action is embedded below: