In a concerning development for e-commerce security, hackers have been discovered exploiting a critical flaw in the popular Magento platform, leaving numerous online stores vulnerable to data breaches. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2024-20720 with a severity score of 9.1, was acknowledged and addressed by Adobe in security updates released on February 13, 2024.
The exploit involves injecting a persistent backdoor into e-commerce websites, allowing threat actors to execute arbitrary commands and potentially steal sensitive payment data. Security experts from Sansec revealed that attackers are utilising a cleverly crafted layout template stored in the database to automatically insert malicious code into the system.
By combining the Magento layout parser with the beberlei/assert package, hackers can execute system commands, particularly targeting the checkout cart section of affected websites. This malicious code, facilitated by the ‘sed’ command, enables the installation of a payment skimmer, designed to capture and transmit financial information to compromised Magento stores under the attackers’ control.
This incident underlines the urgency for e-commerce businesses to promptly apply security patches provided by Magento to mitigate the risk of exploitation. Failure to do so could leave them susceptible to financial losses and reputational damage.