By Andrey Kucherov, Malware Analyst at Imunify360 The detection rates of anti-malware and antivirus scanners varies considerably. Knowing how to manually scan for and remove malware is an important and useful skill with which to confirm a scanner's effectiveness or compensate for its failings. In this article, Andrey Kucherov, Malware Analyst at Imunify360, describes some essential manual website malware detection and cleanup techniques.   Introduction The reality of modern security creates new challenges for web hosts every day. It is well known that there is no absolute protection that guarantees a 0% chance of your website being hacked. Even major players in online markets suffer fro...

Stay in the light; be aware of the dark. Anonymous 'Know your enemy' is an overused cliche in the cybersecurity industry. We take a broader view: Know your world, and your place in it.  Our team knows the hacking world. We've recruited ethical hackers, OSCP-certified engineers, and seasoned IT professionals, all of whom are watching the dark web and its subversive operatives, watching how threats evolve and how attacks are planned. We routinely monitor zero-day exploits, examining use-cases thoroughly and responding with robust mitigation strategies. The fruits of intensive research and development are augmented by both human experience and machine learning. This sharpens our ability to...

By Andrey Kucherov, Malware Analyst at Imunify360.  This article discusses the hidden pitfalls of hosting multiple websites on one hosting account, and how you can remediate the consequences of website cross-contamination. The structure of virtual hosting (also known as shared hosting) can be illustrated by a bee hive: each website (bee) has its own folder (cell). At the same time, all bees share the same hive (hosting account resources, such as disk space, database, RAM, CPU, etc.). In most cases, hosting companies do not provide resource isolation for shared hosting accounts (plans that let you host multiple websites on one account). In practice, that means that all website files are ...

​For ISPmanager panel users, Revisium Antivirus changes its name to ImunifyAV , keeping its reputation as a popular and effective malware and virus scanner. Today, ISPsystem release a new version of their ISPmanager Lite hosting panel. This version comes pre-installed with ImunifyAV , the new name for Revisium Antivirus. With it, you can scan an unlimited number of websites and users per server, do automatic malware cleanup and create schedules for scanning. You can also get email alerts about any website infections. You can find ImunifyAV in the Tools menu: ​ If a user doesn't have an antivirus solution already configured, ImunifyAV becomes the default for that panel. Otherwise, a system ad...

If you think your site won't be hacked because it's too small to matter, think again. I'll show why that is a false and dangerous assumption. Many site owners and webmasters think that hackers only care about popular, highly-ranked websites. They are wrong. High traffic volume helps boost earnings on partner programs by redirecting visitors to other sites, gets more views of unauthorized advertisements and attracts more clicks on rogue links. But that is not the only way hackers make money. Unprotected sites with low traffic volume are equally attractive to hackers. It is the way they are used that differs from how hackers monetize more popular websites. Any normal site, with an audience of ...

If you use Plesk, you'll know it's one of the leading control panels for web hosters and resellers, and one that supports Opsani VCTR, or, to give its new name, Imunify QuickPatch . Here's an introduction to what it does and why you need it if you care about the security of hosted websites. Making sure your system and its packages are up to date is a fundamental strategy for keeping systems secure. The problem is in the management overhead this creates. The packages and configurations of each system must be regularly checked and updated*. Imunify QuickPatch does this for you. Imunify QuickPatch is free. It scans and analyzes your system for security issues. Imunify QuickPatch analyzes server...

Plesk panel users will soon notice a change in their panels. For Plesk panel users, Revisium Antivirus changes its name to ImunifyAV , keeping its reputation as a popular and effective malware and virus scanner, and joining the Imunify360 security solution for complete protection of Linux Web servers. As with its previous version, ImunifyAV comes in free and paid versions. The free ImunifyAV efficiently scans websites and detects all kinds of malware. Use it for an unlimited number of scans on all websites on a server. ImunifyAV+ is the paid upgrade that does this and more, with a one-click automated cleanup option for full sanitization of entire servers, effortlessly. Both versions have an ...

Thousands of websites get hacked on a daily basis. Actually, thousands out of the many billions of websites on the Internet is quite a low percentage, but if you got unlucky and your website is among those, you need to take it seriously, and respond to the threat quickly and wisely. Unfortunately, very often, website owners are 100% sure that they won't ever be a victim, and do not have a valid disaster recovery plan for such cases. Or, if they do, the plan consists of just one bullet point: I was unlucky and the plan is to shut down my business. In this article, I cover that gap and offer you a solid disaster recovery plan if your website got hacked. Once Upon a Time, a Website Got Hacked… ...

The popular Van Ons WordPress plugin for GDPR compliance, with more than 100,000 active installations, was patched on November 7th due to a privilege escalation vulnerability ( CVE–2018–19207 ) found in version 1.4.2. The WP GDPR Compliance plugin helps website owners meet the recent GDPR European data privacy regulation. This came into effect in May of this year, boosting the plugin's popularity. Starting on 10th November, our Threat Intelligence Group noticed a surge in attacks targeting this exploit vector.   Imunify360 customers were already protected by a WAF rule issued several days earlier. This rule detects and blocks malicious payloads attempting to exploit this attack vector. ...

Keeping watchful is the first step towards effective security; keeping malicious code out of your websites is essential to protect them. I'm excited to let you know about ImunifyAV, our powerful new malware scanner. It's currently available in beta for cPanel and DirectAdmin panels. I'm also happy to tell you it's free and will always be free (as in forever). Here's more about it. ​ ImunifyAV detects all kinds of malware in all types of files —it doesn't matter whether your websites are based on PHP (like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal), or built with classic, static HTML. Our advanced de-obfuscation techniques let it detect malicious code hidden in files using encryption or encoding. ImunifyA...

Twenty years on and spam is still a problem. I'll look at why that is and what we can do to reduce or prevent it. Contrary to popular belief, hacking a site and uploading malicious scripts onto it is not the only way spamming gets a foothold. There are other ways. For example, it could be because of a compromised account, the use of script vulnerabilities, or an incorrectly configured mail server. The diagram below shows an overview of the methods. ​ In this article, I'll look at the different ways unsolicited email (spam) can emanate from a web server, and some of the ways you can stop it. Spamming by hacking A hacked site or server is the most common reason behind an outbreak of spamming a...

There's only one good reason why the load on your hosting server starts increasing–the rest are bad. I'll look at how and why they all happen. I was often contacted by site owners who had a problem with high server load. This common condition is first noticed when an owner gets a warning message from their hosting company. Such messages can be precursors to the blocking of the site, and it can happen to almost any site owner or webmaster. This article covers the different reasons why the load on a site or server might be increasing, and what can be done about it. Webmasters usually find out about excess load from their hosters. Hosting companies regulate and control resource usage for each h...

In this article, I look at why webmasters, site administrators and their users choose and use weak passwords. Later, I recommend ways to create passwords that are reliable and resistant to brute-force attacks. Warnings that the internet is increasingly an unsafe environment appear with alarming regularity in studies commissioned by companies specializing in information security. The growing number of web attacks and the increasing activity of the hacker community require a new discipline and focus on security. But while cybersecurity experts are talking about high technology and advanced protection, it seems a rudimentary rule has been forgotten: the use of strong passwords. Unreliable passw...

In Part 1 , we looked at security isolation as a technical solution for preventing infections on one site spreading to neighboring sites in multi-site hosting systems. In Part 2, we'll consider other non-technical ways to beef up multi-site protection. Site security = technical protection + organizational measures If you don't use security isolation on sites in the same hosting account, you should at least give each site its own account. However, this is often impossible, as the combined sum of each site's content resource needs (disk, memory) is too great. This is where the next elements of complex security come in. I call them organizational measures . Here are some examples. ​ Secure work...

Running shared or VPS servers has risks. When one site is hacked, neighbors succumb shortly after. In this two-part article, I'll explain the risks in detail and what you can do to mitigate them. Shared hosting and VPS servers allow you to host several sites within one user account. If you're a webmaster, a web studio, an Internet agency, or a business owner, you do this not only for convenience but also to save money, as it is cheaper than buying separate accounts for each site. But there's a problem. Multi-site accounts are vulnerable to hacking and the subsequent infection of the entire hosting account. Often, there are dozens of "patients" (tenants) on the same site who urgently need tre...

This month, October 2018, in the US it is the 15th National Cybersecurity Awareness Month . Another month, another 'awareness' . Does this suppose that all the other 11 months we should be less aware? Do hackers make a special effort to be nicer in October? Do they leave love letters on your server instead of malware? Does it help if you live on Tokelau*? No. EVERY month is cybersecurity awareness month, and every week and every day and every second of every day, everywhere. Because cyber attacks are automated. Hackers are using scripts and scalable tools to do the grunt work, the same way you make scripts to automate tedious tasks on your servers. Here's a recipe for success this cybersecur...

We are happy to announce that Ubuntu 16.04 LTS support was added with the Imunify360 3.6.0 beta release . This means that Plesk users can now take advantage of all Imunify360 security features including the new Proactive Defense , advanced firewall, malware scanning (antivirus), IDS/IPS protection, reputation management, and much more , all inside one comprehensive but simple-to-use dashboard. As you know, Imunify360 runs on CentOS 6 & 7, and CloudLinux OS 6 & 7 distributions. We have now added Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to that list. Plesk customers can install Imunify360 for Ubuntu using these instructions . After installation, customers will find Imunify360 in Plesk's "Links to Additional S...

Sophisticated malware needs sophisticated solutions to combat it. With web security, prevention is always the best defense. Imunify360 detects known attacks with its built-in Malware Scanner. Now, a new feature, Proactive Defense , takes protection to a whole new level. ​ Imunify360 blocks attacks with a combination of technologies: signature matching, real-time behaviour analysis, and herd immunity, informed by insights collected from servers around the globe. It is invaluable to web server owners, helping them adapt their security efforts to changing malware threats without the need to swap one antivirus solution for another.  Imunify360 is an all-inclusive and comprehensive secu...

Firewalls and malware scanners focus on protecting against known attacks, but how do you protect against new security threats? With Proactive Defense in Imunify360 . It proactively stops malware from attacking your websites and servers. It intercepts all activity in real time, analyzes the behavior of PHP scripts, and then stops any known or unknown malicious codes from being executed. Proactive Defense is very effective because it analyzes what PHP scripts do rather than what is actually in the code or file.  Here you will learn how Proactive Defense works and how it stops even the malware that scanners are unable to detect.  View the recorded webinar here.

Proactive Defense , the new feature of Imunify360, has now been released to production for cPanel customers. This new technology has made a significant contribution in our multi-layer security in stopping malware and protecting your Linux Web servers from most, if not all, attacks. Security has to be effective, and Imunify360 with Proactive Defense is. Proactive Defense protects against malicious activity not by scanning and identifying signatures of malware, but by recognizing malicious intent based on the behavior of the PHP scripts. While there are millions of various strains out in the wild, all malware behave in a similar manner, and the number of variations of those behaviors is relati...