PHP.net compromised to serve malware

On Thursday, Google’s Safe Browsing service began warning visitors to php.net that the website was discovered serving malware. Initially, most people and PHP maintainers thought that it was a false positive, but subsequent investigation confirmed that some of the project’s servers did get compromised.

The hackers succeeded in injecting malicious JavaScript code (userprefs.js) in four of the site’s pages. When visitors landed on them, the code allowed for automatic detection of vulnerable plug-ins, and the serving of malicious SWF files. It’s interesting to note that only desktop browser users were targeted – those who visited the compromised pages with a mobile browser were safe.

Barracuda Networks researchers managed to get their hands on a packet capture file, and provided it to other researchers for analysis. Kaspersky Lab’s Fabio Assolini noted that the malicious iFrame pointed to the Magnitude Exploit Kit and dropped a variant of the Tepfer information-stealing Trojan with a low AV detection rate.

SOURCE: net-security.org