RiskIQ detects and mitigates new Magecart supply chain attack

RiskIQ, the global leader in digital risk management, today reveals it helped mitigate and prevent damages from yet another attempted large-scale supply chain attack by the well-known credit card-skimming gang, Magecart. Magecart is the umbrella term given to seven similar groups implicated in the breaches of Ticketmaster, British Airways, and Newegg.

With its internet-scale visibility and its detection algorithms now well-honed on the Magecart skimmer, RiskIQ was automatically alerted to the compromise of Shopper Approved, a customer rating plugin that integrates with thousands of e-commerce sites. As observed in the July Magecart attack against Ticketmaster, this attack did not attempt to breach a single store directly, but rather a widely used third-party that gives attackers access to thousands of sites at once.

RiskIQ’s researchers immediately reached out to Shopper Approved to provide information and assistance with remediation. Since the incident, RiskIQ has been in frequent contact with the company, which removed the skimmer and launched a full-scale internal investigation using a leading forensics firm to determine how the breach happened and which sites were affected.

“On behalf of Shopper Approved, I want to personally thank the RiskIQ team for the diligence and incredible effort they’ve taken in helping us detect and secure our code in such a short amount of time,” said Shopper Approved co-founder and CEO Scott Brandley. “It is rare when you find a company like RiskIQ who genuinely helps people, simply because it is the right thing to do. RiskIQ helped significantly limit the impact caused by Magecart – and for that, we will be forever grateful.”

While Shopper Approved is active on thousands of websites, due to early mitigation efforts and the fact that the skimmer only appeared on a small percentage of the checkout pages, Magecart impacted only a fraction of these sites. RiskIQ stresses that during this time of heightened Magecart activity, e-commerce sites should be monitoring their checkout pages closely.

“If you own an e-commerce company, it’s best to remove the third-party code from your checkout pages whenever possible,” said Yonathan Klijnsma, head researcher at RiskIQ. “Many payment service providers have already taken this approach by prohibiting third-party code from running on pages where customers enter their payment information.”

As Magecart groups evolve—initial attacks involved low-tier Magento stores and have grown in sophistication to target CDNs, which the threat actors now tune to ensure the only sites they hit are online stores—any supplier of functionality to online e-commerce websites is a potential victim. RiskIQ, which detects internet-scale threats, is alerted to new Magecart breaches hourly, a clear indication that the group is extremely active and a genuine threat to all organisations offering online payment facilities.

RiskIQ is monitoring all Magecart groups and will continue to report publicly on their activity. For a full analysis of this campaign, including a list of compromised components and IOCs, visit the report here: https://www.riskiq.com/blog/labs/magecart-shopper-approved/