Cybercriminals target pizza delivery website to concoct personalized spam campaigns

• The scammers used the website’s content in order to create tailor-made spam campaigns.
• In one instance, the attackers promoted Xenical, a prescription drug used to treat obesity.

A pizza delivery website has become the latest target of cyberattackers as it was exploited to deliver personalized spam campaigns. This compromised website was first discovered by Sucuri researchers who it using an older version of WordPress. The attackers exploited the website content in order to devise personalized spams. In one instance, they also promoted Xenical, a prescription medication meant for treating obesity.

The big picture

• The attackers advertised Xenical in a message filled with hyperlinks on the homepage of the compromised pizza delivery site.
• The message begins by mentioning pizza as one of the food products responsible for obesity and then trails with information on Xenical and its availability on a site known as ‘DietXPills’. It also impersonated the pizza company.
• Sucuri researchers identified that the server shared by the ‘DietXPills’ website was also used by 46 other sites that allegedly sold medications without prescription.
• The message content, which was not encoded, was present in a PHP file of the WordPress-based site. In addition, a malicious WordPress user profile was discovered which was subsequently removed by Sucuri researchers.

Worth noting

The researchers uncovered that the pizza delivery site used an older version of WordPress. “When we received this case, the website had been using outdated software: WordPress version 4.9.6. The most plausible explanation for how the hacker gained access to the site, is that they leveraged the vulnerability to plant their spam content,” they said in the blog.

“We encourage website owners to keep everything in the website up to date, be it plugins, themes, or CMS installations,” advised the researchers.