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Ecommerce: Payment card stealing malware

Authored by Chris Olson, CEO and Co-Founder, The Media Trust.

Malware compromise demonstrates how payment security standards are in dire need of an update for the digital environment.

A bad actor has upped the stakes in his campaign to collect consumer payment card information by expanding his reach to mid-tier ecommerce providers across the US, UK and India, covering a range of industries including apparel, home goods, beauty and sporting event registrations.

Echoing a similar scenario observed over Memorial Day weekend in 2016, the bad actor injected a transparent overlay on top of the credit/debit card information block on a payment page so that a victim’s financial information is surreptitiously collected and sent to another party, not the e-retailer.

Considering these ecommerce firms earn anywhere from a $10,000 to $400,000 a day, the ecommerce firms risk significant revenue loss and negative consumer confidence. In addition, they also demonstrate inadequate security processes, even though these processes may comply with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards.

[Please note, The Media Trust has a policy of not revealing the names of websites experiencing an active compromise. Affected ecommerce site operators were, however, notified of this breach.]

The big picture

The infection gradually spread to a number of small and mid-tier ecommerce sites in the US, UK and India, over the last few days. Upon analysis, The Media Trust discovered that each ecommerce provider uses the same open source content management system (CMS) to serve as the consumer-facing front end. The CMS platform’s master page script is infected with one of the several malicious domains. The malicious domain is present in the website’s footer section which means that it permeates every page of the site and not just the checkout page.

In addition, researchers detected multiple domain pairs, which were registered by the same bad actor within the past few months and labeled as suspicious by The Media Trust within two weeks of creation. The domains are now overtly malicious. To avoid detection, the malicious domains execute over varying time intervals and, in at least one instance, move from website to website across the three regions.

Scenario breakdown

In the course of supporting our clients, The Media Trust first detected the malicious actor via client-side scans of advertising-related content, i.e., creative, tags and landing page. The ecommerce site serves as the landing page for an advertising campaign.

The actor used multiple techniques to carry out his attack. In the following scenario, the landing page contains <assetsbrain[dot]com>, extraneous code unnecessary for the proper execution of a payment.

Malicious domain in the website’s footer

When the victim chooses to make a purchase via the checkout page, <assetsbrain[dot]com> performs two distinct actions: executes JavaScript to inject a transparent overlay on top of the payment card information block and drops a user-identifying cookie.

Execution of transparent overlay

After input of card details, the malicious domain sends the information to <bralntree.com/checkPayments[dot]php>, an obvious spoof of a common payments platform.

Because the ecommerce operator doesn’t receive the card details, the shopper receives an error message and/or request to re-submit their payment information. The unauthorized cookie identifies the user and therefore does not execute the malicious script when the user re-enters the payment card information.

Online transactions remain a risky endeavor

In the realm of compromises, this infection highlights the inadequacy of current PCI security standards. Issued by the Payment Card Industry Council in 2005, the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) aims to protect cardholder data used during online financial transactions. Backed by the world’s largest credit card issues, PCI DSS requires online merchants to conform to a set of standards such as regular website and server vulnerability checks.

The affected ecommerce sites do not have certifications or seals demonstrating PCI compliance. Their privacy policies declare regular scanning and website security policy review; however, these processes are insufficient, since traditional web application security (appsec) solutions are not able to effectively detect malicious behavior executing via third-party code.

Proving the fallibility of traditional web application scanning utilities, all domains (ecommerce providers, initial malicious domain and spoofed payments platform) are considered clean by VirusTotal as of early morning May 16.

Protect your business by securing your revenue stream

Any size ecommerce provider can protect their revenue and reputation by adopting the following website risk management strategies:

• Secure your CMS platform: Review security processes with the CMS platform and keep all code and plugins up to date.
• Surpass PCI DSS standards. Demand more rigorous scanning of the entire website to identify compromise of both owned and third-party code not visible to the website operator.
• Audit operations. Document all vendors and their actions when executing on your website. This helps you quickly identify anomalous behavior and establishes a remediation path.

Leaving the light on…and exposing visitors to malware

Hotel websites are vulnerable to malware and data leakage

The hotel industry is poised for continued growth in 2015, coming off a stellar 2014 which saw occupancy rise to levels not seen in more than 20 years. With the World Tourism Organization projecting more than 1.4 billion international journeys in the year 2020, you can bet that hotel websites will play a central role in fulfilling these travel needs.

What are hotels doing to secure a share of this volume? Many incorporate video, add feedback collection and recommendation features, leverage blogs, or enhance the content management system. These various services provide for a more interactive and engaging website, as well as enable the site to be optimized. But, did you know that they also represent an entry point for malware and data leakage that can expose a customer’s personally identifiable information?

Yes, hotel ecommerce sites are rife with third-party vendors. As outlined in our recent blog post, brand and ecommerce site managers are not doing enough to protect the online and mobile environment FOR their customers. And hotel websites are no different. In fact, current industry rumors point to a manipulation of an account-checking tool used by a major hotel chain. The compromised tool, in concert with stolen passwords, allowed fraudsters to open new accounts and transfer rewards points which were then exchanged for gift cards. So that got The Media Trust thinking about other website vulnerabilities faced by hotels.

In early December, The Media Trust analyzed the 34 top hotel websites, as listed in STORES magazine’s annual “2013 Top 250 Global Hotels” report published in January 2014. Analysis involved the scanning of all public-facing website pages and the capture of all third-party vendors, domains and cookies present on each hotel’s site.

Over a seven-day period, The Media Trust’s Media Scanner scanned each hotel’s website homepage and major sections 250 times a day—a total 1,750 scans across each site. Each scan executed the web page as if being viewed by a typical consumer, and collected and analyzed all third-party code, content and text for security, latency and data leakage issues. Leveraging our presence in more than 500 global locations, The Media Trust replicated a true user experience as if a real consumer visited the website, and therefore did not have the ability to collect actual visitor data.

The results were interesting. The average site utilized 47 different domains, 31 vendors and 65 cookies; however, some outlier hotel sites used as many as 134 domains and 148 cookies.

                                      Average       High

            Domains:             47              134
Vendors:              31                57
Cookies:              65              148

What does this mean? That’s a good question. In theory, low numbers are preferred from a manageability perspective as each domain, vendor or cookie represents an access point to or action on a site—the fewer utilized in site operation, the fewer to manage. However, the reality is that a sizeable number of third-party vendors, domains and cookies are found on most sites as they provide the interactive and engaging functionality executing on browsers.

This functionality comes at a cost. Each third-party vendor represents an access point that could be compromised and serve malware; or, redirect visitors to another, possibly malicious, website or app; or, secretly collect website visitor (first-party) data. In addition, each third party can call dozens of fourth or fifth parties which exponentially increases the risk to site visitors.

Browser cookies provide essential site functions, including the ability to navigate without repeating data entry such as destination, travel dates and room requirements. However, the process of dropping the cookie can easily be compromised by an unauthorized party piggybacking on the cookie. In addition, some third-party vendors drop cookies to collect website visitor/first-party data without website owner/operator knowledge. Known as “data leakage”, these cookies track valuable user behavior—data about guests, their interests and travel periods—which can be resold into the online ecosystem for customer targeting by competitors or industry partners. If that data includes personally identifiable information (PII) the website owner/operator could be subject to data privacy violations. With state attorneys general and the federal government cracking down on PII, hotels must be mindful of public-facing website properties and what is executing on visitor browsers.

Hotel websites are vulnerable to data leakage and malware, and this vulnerability opens the door to litigation and significant brand damage. For these reasons website owner/operators need to thoroughly identify, approve and monitor third-party vendors and their activities at all times.

The big question is: How are the major hotel chains managing their public-facing websites to protect their customers?