Many are likely getting emails with the following subject header: Large Distributed Brute Force WordPress Attack Underway – 40,000 Attacks Per Minute. Just this week we put out a post entitled: More Than 162,000 WordPress Sites Used for Distributed Denial of Service Attack.
What’s the Big Deal?
Remember life before social media? How quiet and content we seemed to be. How the only place we got our information from was the local news or cable outlet? A phone call, or via email?
Today however, we seem to be inundated with information, raw unfiltered data, and left to our thoughts and perceptions as to what they really mean. Every day there is some new tragedy – a plane goes missing, a child is abducted, a school shooting, the brink of WWW III. Is it that we really live in a time of heightened violence and despair? Or could it be that the only difference between now and then is the insane amount of information at our fingertips?
With this in mind, yes, it’s true, there are ongoing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and Brute Force attacks against WordPress sites. In fact it extends far beyond that specific platform, it’s affecting many other platforms like vBulletin, Joomla, and Drupal. The reality is that these attacks have been ongoing for many months now, so much so, that they’ve become part of our daily life and it’s not when they happen that we’re surprised, quite the contrary, when they don’t.
Maybe we get too immune to the issues, maybe we don’t do enough to share and provide feedback. It’s likely attributed to the type and scale of the attacks we see, or the depth of the website landscape we look at. Either way, this post will hopefully get us all comparing apples to apples.
Let’s talk about the biggest issues facing website owners to date in 2014 – Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and Brute Force attacks.
Denial of Service (DoS) / Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are the same thing, except for scale.
When you hear someone mention a DoS attack, you can expect the attack to be marginal (Qualifier: obviously marginal is very subjective and many would disagree that any DoS isn’t marginal). In most instances, when you hear someone say DDoS, think grand.
In either case, whether a DoS or DDoS, the attacker is making use of one or more computers. DoS attacks are on the lower end of that spectrum while DDoS attacks are on the higher, very large DDoS attacks can use 100’s if not 1,000’s of systems (often all compromised). In fact, one of those compromised servers might be your own website server, ever think of that? There is also the possibility they leverage pingback features such as the one we shared earlier this week.
The principle of a DoS / DDoS attack is very simple. The idea and intent is to disrupt your service, regardless of what it is. The US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) provides this description:
In a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, an attacker attempts to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services. By targeting your computer and its network connection, or the computers and network of the sites you are trying to use, an attacker may be able to prevent you from accessing email, websites, online accounts (banking, etc.), or other services that rely on the affected computer. – US CERT
The proliferation of DoS/DDoS attacks is undoubtedly attributed to the ever-growing DDoS-for-hire service market, a.k.a Booter Service, and the media’s infatuation with the scale of such attacks. Brian Krebs wrote an outstanding article on the new norm when it comes to DDoS attacks – 200 – 500 Gbps(GBPS = Gigabytes Per Second). Now, for those unfamiliar with Gigabytes Per Second – that is a very large amount of data, folks. These are not likely the things you, as everyday website owners will be facing though. What you’re more likely to experience are a much smaller scale, think less than 20 GBPS on average.
Don’t be fooled though, the impact and intent are the same – to disrupt your website’s daily operation.
Why DDoS a Website?
As for the why, here are a list of reasons we have come up with that best help comprehend why someone would do something like this:
- People bored with nothing better to do.
- Political agenda – Malaysian Elections 2013.
- You’ve pissed people off – Brian Krebs – The Researchers Hackers Love to Hate.
- You’re in competition with each other.
Do you fit into any of them? The odds are that everyone reading this most likely does, at least into one category, and that right there folks is the biggest challenge with addressing a problem this large.
Brute Force Attacks
Now, let’s take a moment to shift our focus to brute force attacks.
Brute force attacks, although sharing some similarities with DoS/DDoS attacks, are independent attacks. Their entire focus is completely different from what you would come to expect of DoS / DDoS attacks.
In a brute force attack the objective is to gain access to something.
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) group provides us a more eloquent description:
A brute force attack can manifest itself in many different ways, but primarily consists in an attacker configuring predetermined values, making requests to a server using those values, and then analyzing the response. For the sake of efficiency, an attacker may use a dictionary attack (with or without mutations) or a traditional brute-force attack (with given classes of characters e.g.: alphanumeric, special, case (in)sensitive). Considering a given method, number of tries, efficiency of the system which conducts the attack, and estimated efficiency of the system which is attacked the attacker is able to calculate approximately how long it will take to submit all chosen predetermined values. – OWASP
Brute Force Attacks and Websites
The explosion of Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. have made it such that any person looking to quickly establish a virtual presence is now able to do so with little to no effort. From the platforms perspective this is awesome, right? User adoption, market domination, ease of use, happy consumers? Just look at WordPress with over 20% market dominance in the website industry – impressive I know.
Guess who else thinks it’s impressive too? That’s right, the attackers. They realize how the website landscape has changed: it’s no longer combating large organizations with large staff dedicated to security. Instead it’s you – small business owners, bloggers, podcasters, readers, and writers alike. It’s people who have the need to disseminate information easily and freely. Unlike the times of past, this new breed of website owners care more about their content and its distribution than the integrity and security of their website. In fact, if you talk to most website development and design shops you’re likely to get horror stories when it comes to conveying the importance of security to their clients.
This lends itself to brute force vulnerabilities. To be clear though, the issue here is not software in these cases. It’s a people thing. You see, when we talk about brute forcing we’re talking about exploiting a websites access control mechanism (in most cases). When we say access control, we’re referring to the website entry-point (e.g., WordPress – wp-admin / wp-login.php and Joomla – /administrator).
For those that are not technical, imagine walking up to a doorknob and it’s locked. You pull out your awesome key chain, on which you have over 1,000 keys (intense I know), and you proceed to sit there and try every key combination. Yes, highly unrealistic, but what if you could put a robot in your place to go through every combination? Welcome to brute force attacks and the web. Not the smartest, but very easy and proven to be highly effective.
In its simplest form, this is what attackers are doing. They use tools to pass a combination of user and password information to your website’s access control point (think wp-admin / administrator / etc.) hoping they’ll get lucky and get access to your website.
Why Brute Force a Website?
As we mentioned before, the intent of Brute Force attacks is fundamentally different from DoS/DDoS attacks. Their primary objective is access.
In the underbelly of the web, access is king. With it, attackers are able to achieve notoriety amongst their peers, achieve huge economical gains and, of course, bring about unjust pain to your virtual presence.
In most instances, the Brute Force attacks are not manual, instead they are being randomly executed by supporting bots, part of larger networks. These bots are configured to randomly crawl the web for preset conditions (i.e. look for URLs that end with wp-admin). Once the condition is found, the attack is unleashed, and in many instances it’s not too far off target to think that the attacker doesn’t even know who they are attacking, that is until the scan responds with a message declaring the bot found a success. How would your website respond if scanned?
Brute Force Attacks – A Look At the Numbers
It’s always easier when we have statistics to work with, so let’s stick with WordPress and dive into the last 30 days to see what we can come up with.
We went back 30 days and pulled a list of the Top 40 usernames and passwords being used by attackers on WordPress sites specifically. Over that period we were averaging approximately 15,400 brute force per minute. At its peak we were blocking close to 89,400 per minute.
Note: When someone uses the word attack it can be very ambiguous. To help clarify, when we say it in relation to Brute Force and access, we’re referring to attempts against the access point – i.e., wp-admin, wp-login.php, etc…
WordPress currently makes up only 29% of our existing Website Firewall network. The chart below provides a better breakdown of the various platforms in our network.
The following images are going to share some specific insights into what we’re seeing. It will provide you a list of commonly used usernames and passwords by attackers. This is important because the attackers do what is most lucrative, in other words showing what is most effective in terms of success rate.
Brute Force – Username Percentage
This pie chart will provide you a complete list of the top 40 usernames attempted during that period, and their percentage dominance. Here are the top 3:
- admin – 84%
- administrator – 4%
- root – 4%
This pie chart shows how overwhelming the percentage is of attacks that use “admin” or “administrator” as the username. Notice the capitalization – it matters.
You likely noticed how lopsided the username percentages appear. Why is admin at 84%? Yes, it’s likely this is tightly attributed to its success rate. The flip side to that argument is it’s the most convenient and easiest to apply. Although tools exist which allow an attacker to rotate various username and password combinations, technological limitations do preclude this from happening and as such, unlike local Brute Force attempts, the attackers must be more pragmatic in their tests. This would lead you to believe that the real emphasis comes in passwords.
It’s about low-hanging fruit.
Brute Force – Username Usage Distribution
This table will show you a better illustration of the other usernames being tested, their relationship to the two main culprits, “admin” and “administrator” that we had to remove from the chart to better illustrate the distribution.
Brute Force – Password Percentage
This pie chart will provide you a complete list of the top 40 passwords attempted during the same period. No surprise to anyone, the top 3 were:
- password – 14%
- admin – 10%
- 123456 – 6%
Technological Advancements
Advancements in technology have made what some thought to be impossible or unrealistic a few years ago into very stark realities today. We no longer have the challenges we did 10 years ago (or even 5 years ago) around networks and latency. Today with the explosion of websites, and massive lack of understanding on the principles of running a website, or server, we have created a pool of blood and the sharks are hungry!
This is facilitated by a plethora of hacking toolkits, easily accessible in the darkest and not so dark corners of the web. These tools allow attackers to easily and effectively perform DoS/DDoS attacks and brute force attacks. While the two types of attacks are fundamentally different, they do share common traits.
The most common trait being the use of compromised environments – both local desktops and web servers. Whether a DoS/DDoS or Brute Force attack, you can rest assured that the odds the attack is coming from a (what should be) clean environment, is very high. Unfortunately, this is a very grave concern, as attacks increase, so do their success rates, and one of their more effective tools continue to be Brute Force for access and DOS / DDoS for service disruption. In either case, scripts are loaded onto servers, existing resources are leveraged and abused, and the end-result is the same – websites are blacklisted, server IP’s blocked, and website owners, like you, have very miserable days, weeks, or months.
The other harsh reality of Brute Force attacks is that they can be synonymous with DOS / DDoS attacks. Although the intent is different, with a brute force attack they are after access, disruption is often a very close and an acceptable second. The DOS byproduct of a Brute Force attack is being facilitated by overloaded shared servers, a majority of what you see on today’s websites, and mismanaged web servers that are too small for the traffic they do receive, let alone unexpected surges.
When you ask a website owner, “Which would you prefer, DDoS or brute force attacks?” – the response is often the same: neither. The problem is, as mentioned above, it’s about scale. Most of you reading this post are not Fortune 100 / 500 companies with large data centers and Network and Security Operation Centers (NOC/SOC).
The question should not be why me? Instead, let’s focus on how to keep yourself protected…
Protecting Yourself From Brute Force / Denial of Service Attacks
Industries are funny and predictable, and the website security space is no different. In comparison to its brother, the desktop. It’s an infant, perhaps in its toddler years. What this means is an explosion of services, each adapting to the latest trends reported by organizations like ours. This growth unfortunately causes a great deal of confusion and information overload for many website owners.
The biggest misconception is this idea that local solutions will address or fix the growing dilemma of DoS/DDoS and brute force attacks. Solutions like plugins and extensions don’t begin to scratch the surface. Just like service providers are jumping on board to build and release solutions, so are the attackers. The problem is either growing at a much faster rate than planned, or maybe it’s just becoming more visible.
In the upcoming years, we’ll discover that true success lies in service-based Website Firewalls with their own infrastructures designed to handle these issues. The real solution comes down to the distribution, segmentation, and analysis of the traffic load.
The biggest problem local solutions face, is just that they’re local. Their limitations are always tied to their local environment, specifically its resources. This puts most website owners at a disadvantage when you think of resources. Remember the discussion above on scaling and the use of compromised environments?
The other challenge is intelligence, not human intelligence, but attack and data intelligence. Local solutions are restricted to their immediate field of vision, unless you’re a CNN, Times, etc. The odds of seeing enough information to make and employ appropriate countermeasures is not in your favor – this is the harsh reality of the situation.
Justin Daniel![Malware comes in many different varieties. Analyst Krasimir Konov is on this month’s Sucuri Sit-Down to help keep them all straight. From malicious iframes to SEO spam, join host Justin Channell as he racks Krasimir’s brain on all the different types of malware. Also, Krasimir discusses his recent blog post about a malicious cURL downloader, and Justin breaks down the latest website security news, including patched plugins you should update. Podcast Transcript Justin Channell: Hello, and welcome to the Sucuri Sit Down. I'm your host, Justin Channell, and this is a monthly podcast about website security, where we get in-depth with the malware removal experts here at Sucuri. Later in the show, I'll have our analyst Krasimir Konov to chat about some different types of malware, but first, let's take a look at other topics we've published on our blog and Sucuri labs notes this month. First up, we have some new information about credit card skimming with hackers using a hybrid method to steal payment information from eCommerce websites. Our analyst Dennis Sinegubko wrote about this for the Sucuri blog back at the beginning of June. Now, most credit card stealing malware is a client side JavaScript that grabs data and sends it to a third party server. But, that approach has a drawback for bad actors because it's still possible to track the requests and catch them as being suspicious. Now, to get around that, bad actors have started harvesting information server side by modifying core PHP files. In this case, the infection would be undetectable from the outside, but it's still going to be pretty easy to find because you're rarely modifying any of those core files, so any of those changes that are going to come up are going to be suspicious. To get around both of these drawbacks, we're seeing bad actors combine the two. So client side snippets of JavaScript are sending stolen credit card data to server side scripts that they've installed on the same server as the site. Now, this allows bad actors to cover their tracks a little bit because the traffic that's being redirected is going to the same server, and that's less likely to be flagged as suspicious. It's a bit more complicated to pull this off, but our team has been seeing this hybrid approach in the wild, so it's something to be on the lookout for. Now, another month has passed, and we found more cross site scripting attacks targeting WordPress plugins. Most notably, we discovered one that affects users of the YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter plugin. Now, this is a plugin that allows WooCommerce stores to be filtered by product type, and it's pretty popular. It's got about 100,000 users right now, so with it being vulnerable, it's very important that all of them update to the latest version, which is 3.11.1. Some of the other plugins we found cross site scripting vulnerabilities with included Elementor Page Builder, Careerfy, JobSearch, and Newspaper. If you're looking for a full list of vulnerabilities that have been patched this month, John Castro at the Sucuri Labs blog has you covered. Check out our show notes for the link. Also, this month I had a blog go up detailing what's called a jibberish hack. It's basically the same motivation as an SEO spam attack where bad actors use your site's good standing to redirect visitors to their own sites. But in this attack, you'll find a bunch of randomly named folders filled with a ton of HTML files with really nonsensical file names like cheap-cool-hairstyles-photos.html. It's just going to be a mishmash of keywords that clearly you didn't put there. Unfortunately, just deleting all those HTML files and folders is not going to be enough to get rid of that jibberish hack though. You're going to need to fully clean any hacked files and database tables, and then you're going to have to deal with all the damage caused to your site's standing. And just keep in mind, if you find anything about that process too daunting, we're always here to help. Now, for this month's Sit Down, we have Sucuri analyst Krasimir Konov. Earlier in June, he had written a lab's note about a malicious downloader script that used the curl function, and we chatted a bit about it, but more importantly, we went really in-depth on all the different varieties of malware that website owners need to be aware of. But, before I get started with Krasimir, I just wanted to remind you about the Sucuri Sync-Up, our sister podcast. It's a weekly website security news briefing that you can find anywhere you get your podcasts, as well as the video version on our social media feed, and now you can even get it on your Amazon Alexa smart speakers. Just search Amazon skills for Sucuri Sync-Up, add the flash briefing, and get new content delivered every Monday. Now, on with the show. Hi Krasimir, thanks for joining us on the show. I thought we could start off and maybe have you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at Sucuri? Krasimir Konov: Yeah, sure. Well, I joined Sucuri originally in 2014, but I've been in the IT business for about 10 years. Nine of those I did security. And currently at Sucuri I'm one of the malware analysts. I used to work in the front lines, used to clean websites and whatnot, and then I gradually moved up, and now I'm working in the malware research department. And my day to day job is basically analyzing malware, and then once I analyze it and figure out what it is, then I will create a signature for it. And we'll add those signatures to our tools, so we can automate some of the work we do. And I also write some Labs Notes blog posts. Usually, if I find something interesting in malware or some security topic, I'll write about it. Justin Channell: Yeah. And of those topics recently that you wrote about, one was about a malicious curl downloader, and how exactly did that work? Krasimir Konov: Right, yeah. That was an interesting one, but not very unique or anything like that. We see that a lot with curl being used as a downloader. It's a very common malware. So rather than including the actual malware in the file, the attackers would use curl to download the malicious code. In this case, they'll download it from Pastebin, but it could be anything. It could be another website or anything like that, and curl would just make a call to the website, request the code. The website will respond with the code, and then later on, there is some code to either save the output somewhere on the website, or you'll just run it through eval and execute the actual code right away. Justin Channell: Right. And you said that it's commonly found in malware, but let's kind of maybe talk a bit broader about malware in general. What is everything that is classified as malware? Krasimir Konov: Well, in general it will be anything that the owner of the website didn't authorize, anything that was added by a third party. There is a lot of different malware. It could be even something like a defacement that will also be considered malware because it was something the user did not authorize. Even though it might not be doing anything malicious on the website, it's not infecting users, the visit is still something they did not authorize. So defacement would also be considered malware. And even something like ransomware where the website is technically not really damaged, it's all encrypted, but it's not infecting anybody. It's not doing anything malicious, but it's still encrypting the entire website and asking the user or the customer, the owner of the website for a ransom they need to pay in order to get the website back online. Justin Channell: Okay. Let's maybe break it down to each individual type of malware. For example, what would be a way that maybe I-frames could be maliciously used by a hacker? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. An I-frame can be used maliciously when it loads content from another location. You can look at the I-frame as a window that just opens another website. So anything that website has on it, you're pretty much loading it through the I-frame. So if that website is infected and it's serving some kind of malware, by opening an I-frame, you're loading all those elements, everything that was on this website. And sometimes the I-frame can be as small as pixel or something hidden somewhere off the screen, so you wouldn't even know that it was opening it. Justin Channell: And yeah, I feel like we've also seen a lot of them where they're used almost to mimic popups as well. Krasimir Konov: Yeah. I mean the I-frame, it could just load from another website and the other website could do anything. It could be serving just malware and it would try to infect the user that doesn't even know that they're being connected to the other website. It could just have some other JavaScript that's just trying to open up pop ups on the original website through the I-frame. Yeah, it could be a lot of things. Justin Channell: Okay. And also, let's talk a little bit about conditional redirects and how those work. What allows a script to detect which devices are coming in and where they're coming from? Krasimir Konov: Right. Yeah. That's a common one we see a lot. Basically, a conditional redirect would be something, it's a redirect on the website. It's obviously malicious, but there's certain conditions that need to be met before the redirect is actually executed or the redirect happens. For example, let's say if it's on a phishing website or a phishing page that is hidden somewhere on the website. For example, if Google visits it, obviously the attacker doesn't want Google to see the actual phishing page and record it as a phishing page. So they'll look for, for example, the IP address. They would look for the user agent. And a lot of times they can tell that it's a bot. So they'll just return a 404 response, for example, that will be like, "Oh, page not found." So Google would be like, "Oh, it looks like this page doesn't exist." But then if a regular user goes to the same page, then those conditions will be met. The actual website or the script behind the phishing will check and see, and be like, "Oh, this one is running Firefox or Chrome," and be like, okay. And then they'll look at the IP and be like, "Oh, he's in whatever, he's in United States somewhere." And he's like, "Oh, okay. That's good." And then once all of these conditions are met, then the actual script will serve them the actual phishing page. And it'll be like, "Oh, you need to fill out this to recover your account or whatever, or type in your credentials to log in here." Justin Channell: And so this is the type of thing we're really, a website owner is going to run into this more commonly when people are complaining about they're getting served bad content or whatever, and they can't seem to replicate it. It's likely probably these kind of redirects. Is that right? Krasimir Konov: Right, right. It could be something as specific as, for example, a range of IP addresses that correspond to an ISP or maybe let's say a country. It could be like, "Oh, were targeting only customers in the US," so if you're connecting from another country and you go to the same website or the same page, it would just say 404. It will give you a page not found. But then if you actually have an IP address from the United States, you're connecting from the United States, then it will actually show you the phishing page. Justin Channell: Now another type of malware I feel like we see a lot here is SEO spam. We hear people talking about that. What are some of the top SEO spam keywords that you see coming through? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. We get that a lot. We see a lot of spam on websites. A lot of times attackers will use SEO spam to gain ranking for their own website. Or they'll just try to include some kind of SEO spam in links to another website that they're currently running or something. I mean, these things change all the time. So a website might be up for a week and then it'll disappear, and then they'll start another campaign. But yeah, we see that a lot. We see all kinds of keywords they use. Most common ones will be something like Viagra. We'll have like jerseys for sale. A lot of times, they'll use name brands like Nike, Rolex, Prada. We've seen even some essay writing services for some reason. I'm not sure why, but that's common. We see, for example, pharmaceuticals a lot that will use specific medicine names. They'll use all kinds of replicas, like a replica bag of this, replica this, replica that. We'd see prescription, also payday loans. And obviously there's some adult related sites and things like that keywords. Justin Channell: So pretty much anything that people are going to be searching and clicking on are probably going to be targets for SEO spam? Krasimir Konov: Right. I think a lot of it commonly is pharma related because a lot of people are looking to buy medicine online, and a lot of times will require a prescription. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, let me see if I can find this medicine that I can buy it online somewhere." They don't need a prescription. They don't want to pay to visit a doctor and whatnot, and they'll look for it. And yeah. Justin Channell: Now, whenever somebody's website does get hacked with a SEO spam attack, what kind of effect can it have on the website beyond just being defaced? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. You can have a lot of things can happen, negative things. For example, the website can be blacklisted because of the keywords. And that usually represents a big red warning when you go on the website, depending on who blacklisted it. But if it's Google, for example, you'll see a big warning and it'll tell you this website contains malware or there's something wrong with this website. So, pretty much all the traffic on the website will be gone. And then you can also lose a lot of your reputation if there is a SEO spam on the website. For example, if you were ranked in say number five for certain keywords that represent your product on Google search engines, and then suddenly you get hit with SEO spam, then all these search engines then go and visit the website. And all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, there's all these weird key words on here, all this SEO spam that's causing a lot of mixed signals." And the search engines are like, "Oh, where do we rank this website now? Do we rank them with this product that's originally what the website is about? Or do we take into consideration all these other keywords that are mixed up that are SEO spam?" So, all of a sudden your website might go from being ranked number five on the first page to being on the 10th page. And then you rank for all these other keywords that you didn't intend to. And then people search for something completely different. They're searching for jerseys or something, or now they're searching for Prada products, and then suddenly your website pops up in there. So you're not really getting any good traffic, not targeted traffic. But, yeah. Justin Channell: Okay. So in a lot of ways, the effects of SEO spam would kind of be the same for defacements or any kind of malware with the blacklisting, but it does bring that kind of unique part to it where then it can also then bring traffic that you weren't expecting from somebody searching for jerseys, for example. I had not really ever thought about that. Krasimir Konov: Right, right. Yeah. It will definitely bring some traffic. I've seen a lot of times where websites will be connected. Let's say, there was 1,000 websites that were all infected with SEO spam, and it will kind of link each other to try to bring each other up into the rankings. And so you would see a lot of strange traffic from some random websites that were, for example, that were previously infected, even if they might not be anymore. But yeah, they'll be sending traffic to you or there'll be usually search engines sending you traffic, but for the wrong keywords. People are looking for something else, so obviously they're not going to be interested in your website. They're not going to buy anything because they're not looking for that. Justin Channell: And now, so thinking of the way websites get infected, a very common way it seems to be is through phishing campaigns. What are some recommendations you have for the best ways to avoid becoming a phishing victim? Krasimir Konov: Yeah. There is some ways. I mean, it depends really on the type of attack. Obviously, a lot of people, when they think of phishing, they think, "Oh, it's just like a PayPal phishing page and it just looks like the original," but it could be more subtle. If it's just a regular page where you're just going and you get redirected to another website, obviously the first thing to look is if you have the security padlocks, make sure that traffic is encrypted. A lot of these websites don't really have any encryption nowadays. More are starting to get that with pre SSLs being issued and whatnot. But that's the first thing to look and see, make sure. Anywhere you're typing your sensitive information, you want to make sure you have the padlock to make sure everything is encrypted. Krasimir Konov: But also you want to look at the URL of the actual website you're visiting. A lot of times they'll try to hide it. So you might have to be careful and look closely. Something that might be an I will be an L or something like that. And a capital I and L might look kind of similar into your IRL, so you might miss something like that. Say, if you're looking for PayPal and it might replace the L with an I, and if you don't look closely, it might look exactly the same. And you're like, "Oh, okay, it's paypal.com," but not really. So yeah. Just pay attention to the URL, make sure it is the actual website. There's no paypal.com dot something, dot something else, dot com. Yeah. You want it to just say paypal.com, and then it'll have forward slash and something else. But yeah, it gets more complicated when you have, for example, a phishing page that's injected into a regular page. For example, you have a checkout page on a website that you're buying things from and you go through the checkout page and you're looking at where you type in your credit card information and whatnot. And you might have a phishing page that actually looks exactly like a little box that gives you where you put in your credit card number, or your name, your address, and all that. So that will be more subtle. For example, that could be also an I-frame that's just coming from another page. And it will look exactly like it's part of the website. You're on the legitimate website, but only that portion of the website is actually the phishing page. And you look at it and you're like, "Oh, okay. It looks fine. I'm just putting my credentials." So that one could be a lot harder to figure it out. Usually, if it's something like that, I look for something that looks kind of out of place. Maybe they didn't get the right font. It might not be the same as the original website or there might be something out of place, some fields that are missing or some fields that are squished into the left or the right. It looks kind of awkward. It's like, why would this be like this? The whole website looks professional. There's a pink background or something, for example, and then suddenly there's this white box in the middle. It's like, ah, it looks kind of weird, out of place. Justin Channell: So pretty much if anything looks slightly out of place, you really should double check everything at that point. Krasimir Konov: Right. Right. Yeah. Obviously there's more ways that you can check, but I wouldn't get into more technical, like inspecting elements and looking at stuff, but yeah. Justin Channell: And now another type of malware that's kind of, and it kind of plays in with whatever the other infection is, is backdoors. Can you give us some examples of what backdoors can be? It's mainly just when a hacker can get back into the site to reinfect it, but I know there are a ton of different methods. And what are some of the more common ones and then maybe some that really interesting that you've seen? Krasimir Konov: Yeah, there is a lot. They'll probably be one of the first things the hacker would do is if they compromise a website, obviously they'll try to spread backdoors and just inject code everywhere so they can get back in, even if the owner of the website or webmaster cleans it. They want to try and hide some malicious code somewhere so they can always get back in. There's many variations. A backdoor could be something as simple as a single line of code to just [inaudible 00:20:19] argument, some kind of string or something via get or post. Krasimir Konov: And then it runs into an eval, so it evaluates the code and executes it. And some backdoors are very complex and they can be included in, let's say you have a WordPress site and you have a specific login page where all the login credentials are being processed and everything else. They could even inject code into that to basically bypass the whole login mechanism so that they can just bypass everything. They don't even have to know any user. They don't have to know the password, nothing. They'll just include some lines in there, and every time they'll be just able to log in. Yeah. It gets pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of malware. There is always a malware, for example, that just targets credit cards and will just target the eCommerce websites. And they'll just try to steal the login credentials, I mean, the credit cards. They'll try to get your address, your credit card information, any kind of CVV code or whatever you typed into the billing address, everything. And then there's also malware like the backdoors that are just trying to keep the attacker in control and trying to get them back into the website. There's just so many variations of what a malicious user might want to do on a website. Some can be something as simple as just reinfecting the website. They don't want to keep control. They just want to keep reinfecting it with some kind of malware. So even if you clean it, it would just get reinfected. Some of them in the database, otherwise might be in the files. We've seen some added into a [inaudible 00:22:14] job that just keeps running on the server. There could be malware that is just a giant to, for example, attack out of websites. Like for example, a distributed denial service where they put the same malware on thousands of websites. And then they try to send traffic to one website to try to bring it down. Yeah. People try to do all kinds of stuff with websites. We've seen even some cryptocurrency mining malware that you go onto a website and suddenly your PC starts running like crazy. And you're like, what the hell is going on? Your fans turn on and the PC is 100% CPU. And it turns out that the website has some malware that's just by mining Bitcoins with your CPU and it's using all of it. Justin Channell: Wow. Okay. So one question now, the last question I have is of all the malware that you've seen, what do you think is the coolest piece of malware that you've ever seen? Krasimir Konov: I think the coolest would be the ones that are so subtle that you don't even know that it's there. For example, we've seen some that were pretty innovative. It will be just a one liner code that's just one line. And for example, it will be let's say 40-50 characters, something like that. And that's all it is. And they'll hide it somewhere in between the legitimate code. And if you don't know what you're looking for, you would never see it. It doesn't look suspicious. There is no links to some other website. There's no some kind of encrypted code or anything like that. It's just a simple one line. And then if you're just scrolling through the file looking for something, you would never see it. It just looks like all the other code. And then if you look closely, you're like, "Oh, there's this..." Look closely, and you're like, "Oh wow, this is not supposed to be there." And then you keep looking at it and you're like, "This looks really weird." And then you see that it's actually doing some malicious things and trying to evaluate some code or taking output from the outside, I mean, some input from outside, you can call it and give it code to run. Justin Channell: Well, Krasimir, thanks for coming on and talking to us for today. Krasimir Konov: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so happy. I'm glad I was able to do this podcast and I can't wait to do another one. Justin Channell: Yeah, we'll have you on again. Thanks. Krasimir Konov: Thank you. Justin Channell: Thanks again to Krasimir for joining us here on the Sit Down. We'll be back with another episode next month. So be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or any podcasting platform. Also, be sure to follow us on social media at Sucuri Security and check us out at sucuri.net. That's S-U-C-U-R-I.net. I'm Justin Channell, And this has been the Sucuri Sit Down. Stay safe out there.](https://blog.sucuri.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20-sucuri-podcast-blog-post_blog_image-390x183.jpg)
Justin Channell
Ben Martin
Luke Leal
Denis Sinegubko
Douglas Santos
Victor Santoyo
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16 comments
Good post, Tony.
I would draw a subtle distinction in your descriptions of DoS and DDoS. A DoS is not a baby DDoS. A DDoS is a very special type of attack because it is just that — distributed. It uses multiple vectors/origins of attack (usually through a network of compromised computers/servers, a botnet) to launch an inordinate amount of traffic at a small set of targets thereby overwhelming the system and/or the bandwidth pipe in and out of the system. This in turn makes the system unavailable for legitimate users. They are, in essence, denied service because of a distributed attack.
Thinking in terms of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA), denial of service, whether it’s distributed or not, attacks the availability portion. Mainly this is because it’s restricting access to a resource by making it unavailable.
Brute force attacks attack the confidentiality of a system in that an unauthorized user will gain access to a system that contains confidential data.
A brute force attack, because it can be resource intensive or the system may not know how to handle that number of requests because of database calls or whatever, may result in a denial of service (DoS) but the attack in and of itself is not a true DoS. It just so happens that the outcome of the brute force attack resulted in a denial of service condition for the app at hand.
So while there are any multitude of ways a DoS can happen on a system, there are very specific ways a DDoS can happen. AND they can attack your system in different ways. For example, a DDoS could attack the network layer of the data center or host itself overwhelming the infrastructure to your server OR it could be an application level DDoS where a series of specially crafted calls unique to the application you are running ties up the system in a way that legitimate users cannot access it.
For me, one of the key differences is intent. While it is possible that you could be collateral damage in a DDoS situation (your server is located in the same data center as the true target), it is usually the case that someone is launching a DDoS at you to prove a point or make a statement. Think hacktivism. Someone launching a brute force attack on your system is after sensitive data or access to use at a later time in a more strategic way like making it a part of a botnet to attack other systems.
I read somewhere once, can’t remember where, that hacktivist groups like Lulz or Anon usually resort to DDoS to make their point when other avenues of attacks fail. Because it’s easy and cheap and still makes noise.
For small businesses this is important to remember as they can be victims of automated scans/attacks. Oftentimes, the best approach is one of multiplicity — like layers of an onion. “Defense in depth” is what the folks call it, I think. The more layers they have for attackers to deal with, the harder it is for attackers to make an impact. As you say in your post, they go for the low hanging fruit. If you make it hard for them, automated systems and the lazy script kiddie will have a tough time making inroads to your system.
Hey @rubicant3:disqus
Yes, correct on all accounts. My intent in the post was an explanation at a level that all website owners would be able to read and understand, it’s why things were explained the way they were. Regardless, thanks for the input and thoughtful response.
Lastly, you’re correct, the key differentiator is in definitely intent.. 🙂
All the best,
Tony
Absolutely — I think that’s a great approach, especially since you’re drawing a distinction between DDoS and brute force attacks. As a sys admin and web guy, I just wanted to go a layer deeper for the more technically inclined. Can’t help it, I guess. 😉
Like I said, great post still — would be awesome to do a series of posts for the budding website owner on basic security concepts. You could do like a “Website Security 101” email drip campaign or something.
Hey
I don’t mind at all.. :).. just shows me you read it, and if it encourages discussion and sharing of thoughts then it did what it was meant to do. Love the feedback.
I do love your idea though..
Tony
Brute force attacks rely on trying thousands of passwords so rate-limiting some critical URL’s could be handy.
Modules like Nginx’s limit_req_zone who in fact drop requests when going over a threshold could be wiser rather than leave to PHP to evaluate and act against those attacks.
Great post. Really pretty graphs! I experienced a brute force attack on my WP site last year and wrote about my experience and how I tried to fix it and then finally DID fix it. http://webeminence.com/brute-force-wordpress-login
I agree the plugins are not a solution but they can provide some useful info and defense as I mention in my post. You can read my post to find out what was the secret weapon and has worked thus far. Many people seem to overlook it.
Now reading your post, I’m also wondering if moving wp-admin might be a good solution. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that recommended.
This is great! I can so share with clients! Thank you
Hi @KarmicVisions:disqus
That right there was the point, it makes me happy to hear you say that. It’s to serve as an educational piece that can be referenced as needed, especially when trying to convey to clients the differences.
Thanks
Tony
I like Rubicant3’s suggestion on a series of posts for us technically
challenged web site owners on basic security concepts. Until I signed up
for Sucuri services and am now able to see how my site is being probed
for security weaknesses and how many virtual patches Sucuri has
protected my site with, I never realized all this activity was taking
place to the extent that it is. I have been reading the Sucuri blog
posts but have to admit some go right over my head. I search for
explanations but then you never know if what you are reading around the
internet is correct or if you are being misinformed on purpose. The bad guys I have found sometimes try to pose as the good guys giving security advice.
To have a place to ‘go to’ to learn the right security stuff would be
quite a draw for us technically challenged web site owner/operators.
Heck, even setting up a pay to learn section would be great for those of
us that want to better understand and learn about web site security.
And a plus would be better educated web site owners creating more secure
sites making the web a safer place for everyone to roam.
Hi Tony Perez,
Great Post,
Thanks for sharing the useful info DDos 🙂
-Mosam
Recently I wrote about my experiences with these sorts of attacks and what I did about them, including showing how the Sucuri cloud proxy service helped stop an attack. The post is at http://effectivemarketingontheweb.com/what-a-brute-force-attack-on-a-wordpress-website-looks-like-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/.
Hi Dave
Sorry I missed this comment, that’s a really nice write up, thanks for sharing. Be sure to check back, we’ve added a lot of features in the past month that you might find very helpful.
Y’all should check out this beautiful rendering of a Digital Attack Map: http://designandviolence.moma.org/digital-attack-map-google-ideas/
Thanks for this. I understood a lot of it (layman here). Question: I’m moving my websites to a cloud instead of a server. What additional protections (other than those provided by my cloud provider) should I consider?
Great article, and well written, thanks Tony.
Completely agree about local solutions not always being applicable. Take, for example, a brute force attack against a WordPress site (e.g. http://yourdomainname/wp-admin). Repeated tries at breaking the security will generate a significant resource load on the server (possibly creating a sort of DoS of it’s own in the process), as WordPress executes a bunch of files every time. A web firewall makes so much more sense as it stops suspicious traffic much earlier in the cycle. I use Cloudflare for a few of my sites, but I do find it can be over-zealous at protecting my site – even I’m locked out sometimes, and using an IP address that has been whitelisted at Cloudflare. Would consider the Sucuri WAF, but still keen to keep other Cloudflare benefits (which presents a bit of a cost issue).
Great article. Can you explain to us non-techies how we could change our entry page from being wp – admin? If that’s what the bots are looking for, wouldn’t using a different URL prevent most of the attacks?
Comments are closed.