On Sunday some malicious actors tried to install a back door into the PHP code library, a server-side programming language that powers 79% of sites on the internet, including Facebook and Wikipedia.
The attack recalled one of the worst government hacks in history, on SolarWinds, the IT management software used by many government agencies and large U.S. companies. The SolarWinds attackers—widely thought to be employed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service—planted malware in the SolarWinds system that sends out updates to end users.
As in the SolarWinds attack, the PHP hackers targeted the code base of a widely used library so that the changes they made would impact instances of the software run by end users. The hackers attempted to install a back door that would have allowed them to remotely execute changes to the PHP code after it was put into use by websites. Since they might have activated malware, the hackers may have been able to take control of websites, freeze them,…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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