Four Reasons Why Your Magento Site was Hacked:

1. Showing Off / Defacing

The hacker is trying to deface the Magento site to show off to their buddies that they are talented enough to take over a site. The bigger and more successful a site, the more bragging rights a hacker gets. Usually, this type of Magento site hack includes having a homepage defaced, files deleted and often does not go much deeper than the surface of the website.

These exploits are usually done by:

• Taking advantage of weak passwords in an Admin area
• Taking advantage of weak passwords in the FTP
• Through an open server vulnerability in an image upload directory

Often there are messages left on the website by the hackers that are ugly and hateful. Typically this type of attack is not personal or directed toward you and your organization. These attacks happen because your site had a vulnerability that a hacker was able to reveal through a scan of the site.

Tracking down this sort of hacker can be tough. If the hacker is outside the US, law enforcement or the FBI has limited power, unless there is a specific threat and a solid path of evidence. Customer Paradigm Founder Jeff Finkelstein has worked with the FBI in the past on sites like this and knows just how tricky it can be!

This type of Magento site hack is often easy for our development team to fix by restoring the files of the infected site from a clean backup. The core database is usually not affected. Our team can help you learn how to properly back up your site and protect yourself from future attacks.

2. Infecting the Server / Phishing

Phishing is a type of Magento site hack where the hacker typically doesn’t do anything visible to your Magento site. Instead, with this Magento site hack, the hacker secretly creates a folder somewhere on your site server.

One tactic the hacker may use is to have an email that is sent out to people asking them to log into their Facebook, PayPal or Banking Website – and when they do, it steals their username and passwords, and then sends this information out to a different server. Or, they are trying to use some of the processing power of your site to send out mass spam email messages.

If you’re a victim of this Magento site hack, you’ll likely find out quickly. We have seen cases where a Magento site is hacked, and within minutes they are calling or emailing us to help secure their site.  Our expert team has extensive experience handling this type of Magento site hack, and we can get the site back online fast.

3. Stealing Valuable Information (Credit Card Information etc.)

Magento is very secure, and utilizes PCI compliant payment gateways (such as PayPal Pro or Authorize.net) and never usually stores credit card information on a site.

Magento site hackers are always innovating, and recently we’ve seen many different Magento sites hacks where files have been modified to save customer information and credit card details. The details stolen can include CVV2 codes, expiration dates and more. These files can then allow someone to download the information for later use.

Our team can scan your site to see which files have been affected. Then utilizing our Magento Code Audit Tool check if there are any core file modifications/overrides and if there are any active modules that you haven’t installed. We will then assist with the removal of any Magento site hacks and with ongoing monitoring of your site.

4. Ransomware

Ransomware uses malicious software or code to encrypt a website’s files. This blocks the site owner from their website until a sum of money is paid to the hacker. After the hacker receives the ransom, the site files are unlocked, or the hacker gives the site owner a “key.” This exploit started in Russia but has grown internationally.

Virtual payment to the hacker from the site owner the goal of this Magento site hack. The hacker will typically request payment in a hard to trace currency, such as bitcoin.

Recently we have begun to see an upswing in hackers using ransomware to target Magento sites. In a statement issued from Magento, they do not believe there is a vulnerability in the Magento platform itself. It is thought to be a problem with general web server vulnerabilities.

Our team can help restore your site and address the areas where your site is vulnerable to future attack.

Call us today to get started! 303.473.4400 or visit here for a free consultation >>