Pharma Hack JAN 2023
WP/Woo Security Exploits for SEO/DDoS
Be informed about the latest WP Security Exploits for competitor SEO gains and DoS/DDoS remote controls, identified and reported publicly. With Pharma Hack JAN 2023 the consequences of a hack are ugly. You will experience major backlash on your WordPress domain, costly damage control/recovery, immediate revenue loss with long-term consequences. Consider our Pharma Hack audit.
An estimated 2.243.000+ active WordPress installations are susceptible to these attack types, considering only the publicly available numbers. It is a +16% INCREASE as targeted Pharma Hack compared to last month. The estimated number can double with versions already closed due to security concerns.
The following cases made headlines PUBLICLY in the Pharma Hack JAN 2023 category:
Hire security professionals to protect your WP/Woo from publicly reported cases of Pharma Hack JAN 2023 BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! You will also protect your customers, your reputation and your online business!
- Autoptimize – Sensitive Data Exposure
- Active installations: 1+ million
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your loading time, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Speed Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Speed Up.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- WP Social Sharing – Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- WP Social Sharing – Sensitive Data Exposure
- This plugin has been closed as of December 6, 2022 and is not available for download. This closure is temporary, pending a full review.
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- All-In-One Security (AIOS) – Security and Firewall – Sensitive Data Exposure
- Active installations: 1+ million
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- WPQA – Builder forms Addon For WordPress – Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR)
- Active installations: 50+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Unauthenticated Blind Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) AFTER A YEAR still NOT FIXED in WordPress <= 6.1.1
- WordPress is affected by an unauthenticated blind SSRF in the pingback feature. Because of a race condition between the validation checks and the HTTP request, attackers can reach internal hosts that are explicitly forbidden. This vulnerability was reported to WordPress on January 21; no fix is available yet.
- Disable and block XMLRPC (pingback) feature!
- Easy WP SMTP – WordPress Email SMTP Plugin – Remote Code Execution (RCE)
- Easy WP SMTP – WordPress Email SMTP Plugin – Directory Traversal
- Easy WP SMTP – WordPress Email SMTP Plugin – Arbitrary File Deletion
- Active installations: 600.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- WP Tools Increase Maximum Limits, Repair, Server PHP Info, Javascript errors, File Permissions, Transients, Error Log – Broken Access Control
- Active installations: 2.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- ARMember PREMIUM – Membership Plugin, Content Restriction, Member Levels, User Profile & User signup – Privilege Escalation
- Active installations: 9.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- Paid Membership, Ecommerce, Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile, Paywall & Restrict Content – ProfilePress – PHP Object Injection
- Paid Membership, Ecommerce, Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile, Paywall & Restrict Content – ProfilePress – Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- Active installations: 300.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- WPtouch – PHP Object Injection
- WPtouch – Arbitrary File Upload
- Active installations: 100.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your loading time, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Speed Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Speed Up.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- WP Shamsi – افزونه تاریخ شمسی و فارسی ساز وردپرس – Unauthenticated Arbitrary Plugin Deactivation
- Active installations: 30.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Chained Quiz
– Multiple different Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) - Chained Quiz
– Authenthicated Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Mailchimp API Key - Chained Quiz
– Authenthicated Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Facebook App ID - Chained Quiz
– CrossSite Request Forgery (CSRF) leading to Question Deletion - Chained Quiz
– CrossSite Request Forgery (CSRF) leading to Submitted Response Deletion - Chained Quiz
– CrossSite Request Forgery (CSRF) leading to Arbitrary Quiz Deletion and Copying- Active installations: 2.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
- Consider for your loading time, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Speed Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Speed Up.
- Royal Elementor Addons (Elementor Templates, Post Grid, Mega Menu & Header Footer Builder, WooCommerce Builder, Product Grid, Slider, Parallax Image & other Free Elementor Widgets) – Arbitrary Content Deletion
- Active installations: 100.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Images Optimize and Upload CF7 – Arbitrary Content Deletion
- This plugin has been closed as of November 28, 2022 and is not available for download. This closure is temporary, pending a full review.
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your loading time, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Speed Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Speed Up.
- WPtouch – PHP Object Injection
- WPtouch – Arbitrary File Upload
- Active installations: 100.000+
- Consider for your online safety, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Security.
- Consider for your loading time, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Speed Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP Speed Up.
- Consider for your online privacy, switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP GDPR Plugin – OR – Hire professionals for tailored WP GDPR.
Get Healthy, Stay Healthy! A healthier online business starts today and it begins with your WP/Woo. Hire security experts to solve all your vulnerabilities created from Pharma Hack JAN 2023.
BRIEF: Pharma Hack JAN 2023 is an SEO spam attack type, where a legitimate website is used to sell illicit drugs. In this type of attack, hackers hijack websites, injects malware and uses that specific domain to sell illicit drugs like Viagra, Cialis, Levitra. This is where it started and got its name. Today, not just potency drugs are a drive. Anything that created interest from humans, but their local legislation failed to keep up with the latest trends are in this category. Consider this as a modern inquisition, where your domain is the heretic, spreading undesired ideology – sadly unknowingly.
Pharma Hack Explained
The Pharma Hack JAN 2023 exploits are used to insert rogue code in outdated versions of WordPress, themes and plugins. This new content inside existing pages and post are causing search engines to return ads for pharmaceutical products after a new indexation. The vulnerability is more of a spam menace than traditional malware but gives search engines enough reason to block the domain for distributing spam (NOT creating, JUST maintaining, harbouring, spreading).
Working parts of a Pharma Hack JAN 2023 include a backdoor in plugins, themes and databases. However, the exploits are often vicious variants of encrypted malicious injections hidden in databases and require a thorough clean-up process to fix the vulnerability. Nevertheless, you can easily prevent Pharma Hack by regularly updating your WordPress installations, themes, and plugins.
What is the impact of Pharma Hack JAN 2023?
The consequences of a hack are ugly. You will experience some major backlash on your WordPress domain such as:
– A marked drop in search engine rankings for the keywords you’re targeting;
– High bounce rates as visitors are redirected to different websites;
– Wasted SEO efforts in the future;
– SERP blacklist warnings on your website like:
— This site may be hacked
— Deceptive site ahead etc;
— Hosting account suspensions;
— Email providers blacklisting your domain;
— High cleanup, recovery, damage control costs;
— Major decline in your brand’s image, reputation.
What is Denial of Service (DoS)?
Perhaps the most dangerous of them all, Denial of Service (DoS) is used to overwhelm a specific domain’s hosting resources (memory, CPU, bandwidth, etc). Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.
Hackers have compromised millions of websites and raked in millions by exploiting outdated and buggy versions of WordPress, themes, plugins and 3rd party connected software. Even the latest versions of WordPress software cannot comprehensively defend against high-profile DoS attacks, but will at least help you to avoid getting caught in the crossfire between financial institutions and sophisticated cybercriminals.
What is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)?
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one of the most powerful weapons on the internet. When you hear about a website being “brought down by hackers”, it generally means it has become a victim of a DDoS attack. In short, this means that hackers made that domain unavailable by flooding or crashing the website with too much traffic.
Although financially motivated cybercriminals are less likely to target small companies, they tend to compromise outdated vulnerable websites in creating botnet chains to attack large businesses. The primary way a DDoS is accomplished is through a network of remotely controlled, hacked domains. This is where small businesses come to the crossfire. These are often referred to as zombies, botnets or network of bots. These are used to flood a high profile target.
What is the impact of DoS/DDoS?
Starts with a slow website, with vital parts not working accordingly (checkout, orders/account registration, processing, dispatching). It peaks for a real visitor as page not available. When the entire server crashed, then the domain is unavailable. END GAME.
This is a costly thing to defend in a cloud environment, due to creating more and more servers to serve traffic spike, it burns your hosting budget for an entire year in a few hours. In classical hosting environments, using a single physical machine to host the domain is simply incapable of facing even the most simple, smallest DoS or DDoS attacks.
SOLVE TODAY any reported Pharma Hack JAN 2023 vulnerability! Do you suspect security / seo circumvention in your WordPress / WooCommerce?