DDoS Attacks Exploit Thousands of Outdated .EDU and .GOV WordPress Blogs
Dec 04, 2013
A recent cyberattack on a forum site revealed that thousands of outdated yet legitimate WordPress blogs were leveraged to execute DDoS attacks through known vulnerabilities. Analysis of the victim’s server logs indicated the involvement of numerous educational (.EDU) and government (.GOV) websites. Previously, we reported similar incidents where attackers compromised WordPress blogs using password brute-force methods or exploited the PINGBACK vulnerability present in older WordPress versions, without needing to gain full control of the servers. WordPress’s Pingback feature allows requests to be initiated from multiple locations, resulting in a single machine being able to send millions of requests. In this recent attack, over 100,000 IP addresses were implicated, with the victim’s forum receiving more than 40,000 requests.
DDoS Attacks Launch from Thousands of Outdated .EDU and .GOV WordPress Blogs In a recent cyber assault against a prominent online forum, thousands of obsolete yet legitimate WordPress blogs were exploited to orchestrate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This operation capitalized on previously identified vulnerabilities within the WordPress content…
DDoS Attacks Exploit Thousands of Outdated .EDU and .GOV WordPress Blogs
Dec 04, 2013
A recent cyberattack on a forum site revealed that thousands of outdated yet legitimate WordPress blogs were leveraged to execute DDoS attacks through known vulnerabilities. Analysis of the victim’s server logs indicated the involvement of numerous educational (.EDU) and government (.GOV) websites. Previously, we reported similar incidents where attackers compromised WordPress blogs using password brute-force methods or exploited the PINGBACK vulnerability present in older WordPress versions, without needing to gain full control of the servers. WordPress’s Pingback feature allows requests to be initiated from multiple locations, resulting in a single machine being able to send millions of requests. In this recent attack, over 100,000 IP addresses were implicated, with the victim’s forum receiving more than 40,000 requests.