This last week we have assisted a number of online clients having been compromised via the “Filesman” backdoor. This backdoor is not a new attack – in fact, it’s been very well publicized and documented over the last few years.
Filesman can affect any PHP site – that includes, Magento, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, osCommerce etc. Usually it affects older versions of the website frameworks.
It allows an attacker to easily access your site, make modifications and plant additional malware infections/backdoors elsewhere on your website.
The compromised websites that we have been working with have all had their customer data stolen – including transaction data (credit and debit card details), which means that their clients are likely to see fraud on their credit/debit cards imminently.
There are a great deal of examples available on many security websites - the file names may vary slightly, however this is what we have found this week:
$auth_pass = "";
$color = "#df5";
$default_action = "FilesMan";
$default_charset = "Windows-1251";
Slight variants of the content have been seen but the spelling of "FilesMan" within the first few lines of the malware clearly identify this threat.
You have a few options:
1. The do-it-yourself routea. Remove the malware – delete it.
b. Run a scan of your website using FGX-Web Alert (its free for 30 days) to identify whether you have any other known malware.
c. Update your website framework/CMS/plugins/extensions.
d. Remove inactive files/plugins/extensions.
e. Change your passwords (have a read of our Password blog post if you want some help developing a strong password).
f. Put up a Web Application Firewall – we offer this protection through FGX-Web Protect.
2. We can assist you:
a. Get in touch with our support team.
b. They will help you to get FGX-Web onto your website, remove the malware and check for other backdoors.
Backdoors are usually uploaded once a vulnerability in the website has been exploited – this means that once the backdoor is on your site, your business has been hacked and compromised.