Wordfence Weekly September 04 2019 – September 10 2019

A weekly report of noteworthy threat data by the Defiant threat intelligence team.

Notable Vulnerabilities

Name: WordPress <= 5.2.2 - Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in URL Sanitisation
Description: WordPress before 5.2.3 has an issue with URL sanitization in wp_kses_bad_protocol_once in wp-includes/kses.php that can lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
Type: A1 – Injection

Name: WordPress 5.2.2 – Authenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Post Previews
Description: WordPress before 5.2.3 allows XSS in post previews by authenticated users.
Type: A1 – Injection

Name: WordPress 5.2.2 – Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Dashboard
Description: WordPress before 5.2.3 allows reflected XSS in the dashboard.
Type: A1 – Injection

Name: WordPress 5.2.2 – Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Shortcode Previews
Description: WordPress before 5.2.3 allows XSS in shortcode previews.
Type: A1 – Injection

Name: WordPress 5.2.2 – Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Stored Comments
Description: WordPress before 5.2.3 allows XSS in stored comments.
Type: A1 – Injection

Most Common New Infections

Malware samples identified on the greatest count of newly infected sites.

MD5	Signature	Description	Example File Names
CEC9A529B43D84F0A0E3624372CD9C51	Backdoor:PHP/WP-VCD.5409	Infected core file, triggers execution of another malicious script.	post.php
380FA777B8C37FB60811E5972391261B	Suspicious:PHP/eval_b64.1	WebShellOrb PHP webshell.	.colors-rtl.php, .lapan.php, .wsa.php, and others.
CBF518A7A6722D9C7A9086E57E062737	Backdoor:PHP/WP-VCD.5476	Backdoor associated with SEO spam injections.	wp-vcd.php
C62180F0D626D92E29E83778605DD8BE	Suspicious:PHP/eval_exit.92	Obfuscated PHP backdoor.	4O4.php, file.php, i.php, and others.
3F60851C9F7E37C0D8817101D2212C68	Suspicious:PHP/eval_b64.1	Obfuscated PHP backdoor.	-h7h0pfixp7.phpP, 01nbgrzyxu.php, 05hyfj1bf8.php, and others.

IPs Attacking Most Sites

Rank	Prev.	IP Address	ASN	Country
1	—	217.182.94.214	16276 (OVH SAS)	FR
2	—	139.198.0.135	4808 (China Unicom Beijing Province Network)	CN
3	—	167.99.57.138	14061 (DigitalOcean, LLC)	US
4	—	51.89.224.145	16276 (OVH SAS)	GB
5	—	91.134.154.170	16276 (OVH SAS)	FR
6	—	15.188.83.79	16509 (Amazon.com, Inc.)	FR
7	—	35.235.101.70	15169 (Google LLC)	US
8	—	193.106.30.99	50297 (Infium, UAB)	UA
9	—	74.208.27.141	8560 (1&1 Internet SE)	US
10	3	34.67.197.193	15169 (Google LLC)	US

New Tracked Domains

Domain Name	Date Added	Current Status	Notes
wiilberedmodels.com	09/04/2019	Up	Hosting malicious scripts referenced in malware samples.
js.wiilberedmodels.com	09/06/2019	Up	Hosting malicious scripts referenced in malware samples.

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Recent Issues

Wordfence Weekly October 30 2019 – November 05 2019

This edition of Wordfence Weekly follows a brief hiatus from our team travelling to WordCamp US last week. As you may have guessed following the release of the research behind WP-VCD, the campaign still makes up four of the five slots in our new infection chart.

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Wordfence Weekly October 16 2019 – October 22 2019

In this week's Wordfence Weekly, we've got three vulnerabilities disclosed by the Wordfence team associated with WordPress plugins and themes. A new face appears in the top malware infections list, a script built seemingly only to delete itself when told to. In the attacking IP charts, we see a new ASN joining the rankings: Microsoft Corporation appears three times in the top ten.

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Wordfence Weekly October 09 2019 – October 15 2019

This week saw the release of WordPress 5.2.4, a security release which fixed a number of core vulnerabilities. None of the vulnerabilities are severe enough to suggest widespread abuse, but it's always a good idea to update. A big surprise comes from our attacking IP data, as not a single IP address from last week's rankings was present this week. The same cannot be said of the malware data, as WP-VCD variants continue to maintain a firm hold of the chart.

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Wordfence Weekly October 02 2019 – October 08 2019

This week, three unique variants of the same WP-VCD spam injector made it to the top five new infections, while the other two positions were held by ancillary scripts from the same campaign. A GoDaddy server is the fifth most malicious IP address this week, suggesting infected sites present on the host. The remainder of the list was divided between cloud hosts OVH SAS and DigitalOcean, as seen commonly in recent weeks.

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Wordfence Weekly September 25 2019 – October 01 2019

In this week's Wordfence Weekly, we see a typical array of familiar data. WP-VCD continues to remain the most common new set of infections, and cloud providers DigitalOcean and OVH SAS contribute considerably to the list of top attacking IP addresses. This edition features three vulnerabilities from the past week, including the GiveWP vulnerability disclosed by our own Chloe Chamberland.

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Wordfence Weekly September 18 2019 – September 24 2019

New WP-VCD variants continue to appear on the malware infection rankings, continuing a streak that shows no sign of slowing. The top two IP addresses this week are US-based machines associated with the Chinese tech conglomerate Alibaba, while the rest are divided evenly between cloud hosts DigitalOcean and OVH SAS. Lastly, a few vulnerabilities released this week allow attackers to modify the options of the affected plugins, leading to XSS injection.

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Wordfence Weekly September 11 2019 – September 17 2019

In this Wordfence Weekly we share five new domains which have been added to our blacklist for their association with spamming and malvertising. A slightly modified variant of WP-VCD's wp-tmp.php script reaches the top of the malware chart, while the rest has remained stable from previous weeks. Lastly, several new IP addresses have reached the top ten attacking hosts during a week where the Wordfence firewall detected a notable surge in activity.

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Wordfence Weekly August 28 2019 – September 03 2019

This week we see a continued trend of WP-VCD infections on the top malware chart. Two newly tracked domains have been added, which are hosting malicious scripts referenced by other malware samples. Last, the popular Formidable Forms plugin was recently patched to improve its output sanitization, suggesting exploitability in its earlier versions.

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Wordfence Weekly August 21 2019 – August 27 2019

This week's Wordfence Weekly sees a continued trend of new WP-VCD infections taking over the Most Common New Infections chart. In Attacking IPs, the top two addresses from last week retain their positions while the rest of the list contains new IPs from a variety of hosts. Additionally, we're tracking some new malvertising domains as well as a MySQL host used by attackers taking over unfinished WordPress installs.

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Wordfence Weekly August 14 2019 – August 20 2019

In this Wordfence Weekly, we've got a Directory Traversal vulnerability in the highly popular WP Fastest Cache plugin. In the malware rankings, we see a number of samples associated with the WP_VCD SEO spam campaign as well as more PHP backdoor scripts. Also, this week's attacking IP rankings have returned to a typical spread of activity, with attacks from OVH SAS and DigitalOcean servers controlling the board.

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Wordfence Weekly August 07 2019 – August 13 2019

The prevalence of attacks from US-based host QuadraNet continues in this edition of Wordfence Weekly. Additionally, a few new noteworthy vulnerabilities have popped up, which are each seeing their own attacks. In particular, we've begun tracking some new domains associated with malicious redirects.

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Wordfence Weekly July 31 2019 – August 06 2019

This week, the list of the top IPs attacking WordPress sees a sudden appearance of seven addresses from the US-based hosting provider QuadraNet Enterprises LLC. In the tracked domains, we've added some illegitimate download sites referenced in malicious samples discovered by our site cleaning team.

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Wordfence Weekly July 24 2019 – July 30 2019

July's final Wordfence Weekly sees some news items regarding Marcus Hutchins' sentencing and a data breach from Capital One. Under the week's new tracked domains, we list xn--google-analytcs-xpb[.]com, a punycode domain masquerading as a Google Analytics domain when decoded. Malware trends and common attacking IPs remain stable, though OVH SAS's longtime domination of the attacking IP rankings continues to wane.

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Wordfence Weekly July 17 2019 – July 23 2019

This week's Wordfence Weekly shows an increase in US-based attack traffic, including an IP from popular web host GoDaddy. We're also seeing a rise in infected sites where the PHP webshell "Ironshell" is present. In the news, Equifax is slated to pay a settlement following its 2017 data breach and the nation of Kazakhstan is attempting to man-in-the-middle the internet traffic of its citizens.

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Wordfence Weekly July 10 2019 – July 16 2019

This week saw an uptick in malicious network activity from Chinese hosts, while IPs associated with OVH SAS have begun to pull back. We've begun tracking new domains associated with malvertising campaigns, while familiar backdoor scripts remain the top new infections of the week. In the news, an Instagram access control flaw could have allowed hackers to take over any account, and Apple put its foot down by removing hidden, vulnerable webservers from Zoom clients.

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