Attacks On WordPress Sites Intensify As Hackers Deface Over 1.5 Million Pages (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "Attacks on WordPress sites using a vulnerability in the REST API, patched in WordPress version 4.7.2, have intensified over the past two days, as attackers have now defaced over 1.5 million pages, spread across 39,000 unique domains," reports BleepingComputer. "Initial attacks using the WordPress REST API flaw were reported on Monday by web security firm Sucuri, who said four groups of attackers defaced over 67,000 pages. The number grew to over 100,000 pages the next day, but according to a report from fellow web security firm WordFence, these numbers have skyrocketed today to over 1.5 million pages, as there are now 20 hacking groups involved in a defacement turf war." Making matters worse, over the weekend Google's Search Console service, formerly known as Google Webmaster, was sending out security alerts to people it shouldn't. Google attempted to send security alerts to all WordPress 4.7.0 and 4.7.1 website owners (vulnerable to the REST API flaw), but some emails reached WordPress 4.7.2 owners. Some of which misinterpreted the email and panicked, fearing their site might lose search engine ranking.

Comments

The reason I hate WordPress is PHP.

[Larsen E Whipsnade]

I could harsh on PHP until the cows come home, but that would be annoying. So I'll just say that this sort of security problem shows that it's impractical to write anything secure in PHP. Why? Mainly because it adds a layer of complexity atop compiled binary, and it adds source code access once a hacker has got past a certain level, and... oh, it's just all kinds of insecure.

Just why did PHP become so popular, anyway? I really don't see the attraction. Now WordPress would be a wonderful thing, if only they'd ditch the PHP. It would be a little harder to customize and extend, but far from impossible. Worst case, we could supply a scripting language ONLY for custom extensions. Basically a macro language. Python's embeddable.

(No, I don't consider a widely used API to be a custom extension. That's part of the core.)

More opinion: in a production system, scripting languages and macros should be only for custom extensions, and never for core code. There should never be scripts BEHIND an API. If WordPress were written in a compiled language and run as a binary, it would be less easy to hack. But not C. Those damn pointer arithmetic exploits...

Re:The reason I hate WordPress is PHP.

[marcansoft]

The flaw was specifically made possible by PHP's eagerness to convert malformed strings to best-guess integers instead of raising an error like any sane programming language. You didn't read TFA, did you?

Parent is mostly correct, except where he lumps together all "scripting" languages. This isn't a problem with "scripting" languages, it's a problem with languages like PHP that were designed by people who had no idea what they were doing. Worse, PHP is designed to be deployed in a way that encourages mistakes (PHP files directly in the webroot). PHP security is a game of whack-a-mole where if you forget to whack all the moles in one of your scripts, your site is toast. This wouldn't have happened with a sane scripting language, like Python.

$ php7.1 -r 'echo (int) "123test";'
123
$ python3.5 -c 'print(int("123test"))'
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "", line 1, in
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '123test'

Plea for simplification: static HTML

[xororand]

It is absurd how much computing power is wasted on dynamically generating what is effectively static content, like blogs.
A simple blog should not require an SQL database and complex software stacks that are executed whenever someone visits the site.

Instead, consider using a static website generator like Pelican, or one of the many alternatives.

Write articles and blog posts in a simple, human-readable markup language such as Markdown or ReStructuredText.
Manage your documents in git. Run the generator to recreate the HTML and update Atom/RSS feeds.
The resulting website is blazing fast and can be hosted on dirt cheap servers.

More simplicity on the Internet please.

Re:Plea for simplification: static HTML

[thegarbz]

You say this as someone who knows what they are doing. Markdown? Restructured text? Git? You've just gone beyond the expertise of 99% of blog writers out there.

Wordpress's killer feature is not that it dynamically renders content, its that it allows a complete idiot to dynamically generate it.

Remember the alternative? Remember people typing word documents and saving them as HTML files? If you don't provide a dead simple online WYSIWYG editor with instant publish features and without the requirement to install software on a machine, any proposal you come up with is DOA.

Re:Great.

[marcansoft]

The only secure way to use WordPress is as a static site generator, where the live version is deployed with no dynamic functionality and the administration backend is secured by a layer above WordPress (e.g. HTTP BASIC authentication).

WordPress isn't particularly terrible code, but it is written in a particularly terrible programming language where it's practically impossible to write something secure because things are insecure-by-default and you're expected to defend against all the gotchas explicitly.

I almost believed in WordPress

[NaCh0]

I subcontract with marketing companies so I work with some aspect of WordPress development on a daily basis. The standard groupthink from WordPress evangelists is that the security problems are behind us -- that WordPress core hasn't had a serious vulnerability in years, core has a review process, blame your out of date installations and inexperienced plugin developers.

For those not in the know, the REST API is something new to wordpress. Developers could get early access thru a plugin, but the API now comes included with WP4.7. There is so much buzz and excitement, even among wordpress people who have no idea what REST really is, few people questioned it because this meant WordPress can now take over the world.

I for one questioned it. When I saw REST enabled in 4.7 without a control to disable it my literal reaction was "Are you FUCKING kidding me???" I have experience in security. I understand attack surfaces. I have seen what a fiasco xmlrpc.php attacks are to wordpress. And these idiots open REST APIs to the internet by default? Jesus fucking Christ, I really don't think Matt Mullenweg or any of the other idiots running the WordPress show have any ability to learn from history.

Sadly, there is no evidence of other CMS's surpassing WP in popularity. You should get used to WordPress continuing to be the sendmail of php apps.