Thousands of Websites Compromised, According to Reports

Thousands of Websites Compromised, According to Reports

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Cloud security startup Wiz warns of a widespread redirection campaign in which thousands of websites targeting East Asian audiences have been compromised using legitimate FTP credentials.

In many cases, the attackers managed to obtain highly secure auto-generated FTP credentials and used them to hijack the victim websites to redirect visitors to adult-themed content.

Likely ongoing since September 2022, the campaign has resulted in the compromise of at least 10,000 websites, many owned by small companies and some operated by large corporations. Differences in hosting providers and tech stacks make it difficult to pinpoint a common entry point, Wiz says.

The cybersecurity startup has identified numerous servers associated with this campaign.

The goal of the campaign, Wiz says, could be ad fraud or SEO manipulation, but it is also possible that the attackers are simply looking to increase traffic to the destination websites. However, the threat actors could also decide to abuse the obtained access to perform other nefarious activities.

“We remain unsure as to how the threat actor has been gaining initial access to so many websites, and we have yet to identify any significant commonalities between the impacted servers other than their usage of FTP. Although it’s unlikely that the threat actor is using a 0day vulnerability given the apparently low sophistication of the attack, we can’t rule this out as an option,” Wiz concludes, as reported on by securityweek.com.

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