Thousands of Magento Sites Abused for Malware Distribution

A large number of websites powered by eBay’s Magento e-commerce platform have been breached and abused to deliver malware, researchers warned over the weekend.

The campaign was analyzed by Sucuri, which observed the server side, and antivirus company Malwarebytes, whose researchers monitored the client side of the attack.

According to experts, the attackers compromised Magento websites and injected malicious scripts that create iframes from the “guruincsite.com” domain. The guruincsite website, which according to Google Safe Browsing has already infected more than 8,000 domains, is one of several domains that are part of a redirection chain ending on a Neutrino exploit kit landing page.

Neutrino is set up to exploit a Flash Player vulnerability in an effort to deliver the Andromeda/Gamarue malware, which can be used by cybercriminals to harvest financial information and enlist infected computers in a botnet.

Sucuri says Magento website owners can determine if they are affected by checking the design/footer/absolute_footer entry in the core_config_data table. However, since the injected script is sometimes obfuscated, administrators are also advised to scan the entire database for strings like “guruincsite” and “function LCWEHH(XHFER1){XHFER1=XHFER1”.

The attackers compromised Magento installations by exploiting a zero-day directory traversal flaw in Magmi, a third-party mass importer tool for Magento, Sucuri told SecurityWeek.

Trustwave reported last week that the vulnerability, which can be leveraged to obtain Magento credentials and database encryption keys, has been exploited in the wild. In this case, the attackers are exploiting the flaw to extract database credentials and inject malware directly into the databases of the vulnerable sites.

It’s not uncommon for Magento vulnerabilities to be exploited by malicious actors. In April, Sucuri reported spotting attacks exploiting a Magento flaw less than 24 hours after the existence of the issue was made public.

*Updated with confirmation from Sucuri that Magmi flaw has been exploited in this campaign