Hackers exploit Magento e-commerce vulnerability

The vulnerability can allow an attacker to gain complete control over a store with administrator access, potentially allowing credit card theft, wrote Netanel Rubin of Check Point's Malware and Vulnerability Research Group. As many as 200,000 websites use Magento, which is owned by eBay.

Check Point, which found the flaw, reported it to Magento, which issued a patch (SUPEE-5344) on Feb. 9. Since Check Point revealed the flaw earlier this week, it appears attackers have picked up on it and are trying to find unpatched applications.

Analysts with Sucuri Security wrote on Thursday they've seen indications that attackers using two Russia-based IP addresses are trying to exploit unpatched Magento applications.

The attacks so far appeared aimed at just first creating a fake administrator user in a Magento database, wrote David Cid, CTO and founder of Sucuri. But it's likely the attackers will use that foothold to take over a site later, he wrote.

The exploit code Sucuri analyzed is a SQL injection attack, which inserts a new "admin_user" into a database. Cid wrote the exploit uses the usernames "vpwq" and "defaultmanager." The presence of those names on a system could indicate a successful attack.

Check Point posted a video on its blog that showed how the flaw could be used to reduce the price of a US$100,000 watch on an e-commerce site they created for demonstration purposes.

Rubin wrote the vulnerability in Magento is composed of several flaws which allow an unauthenticated hacker to run PHP code on a web server. The flaws are within Magento's core code and affects default installations of Magento's Community 1.9.1.0 and Enterprise 1.14.1.0 editions, he wrote.

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