AWStats Vulnerability Is Being Widely Exploited

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AWStats Vulnerability Is Being Widely Exploited

Written by Editor

Monday, 07 February 2005 13:13

In January a vulnerability was announced by iDEFENSE for the popular AWStats application which is used by many webmasters to generate statistics from web server logs. It seems however of late this vulnerability has been widely exploited by Defacers to compromise and deface a wide range of web sites, and potentially the recently compromised phpBB.com site. One of the most recent could have been the website of the phpBB the open source bulletin board system. The phpBB site was defaced this weekend by a group of politically motivated hackers according to a notice on the phpBB website. However sources close to the phpBB team have speculated the problem may be due to a security flaw in AWStats.

The phpBB site was defaced by a defacer who goes by the monika of Simiens and the defaced phpBB site can been seen here in the Zone-H defaced website archive. The phpBB site was not the only one to be taken down by this miscreant over the weekend. It seems so far that many of the other sites that suffered the same fate, was as a result of the AWStats vulnerability.

In the case of the phpBB site at the moment the main site is down, however the development board (http://area51.phpbb.com) is still online to provide support for phpBB users. Meanwhile the phpBB developers are confident their compromise was not as a result of a flaw in the phpBB software.

Meanwhile if you are a user of AWStats then we suggest that you get your install secured, firstly if you are using an older version of AWStats than 6.3 it is suggested that you upgrade as soon as possible, or implement the workaround as described in the iDEFENSE advisory here. Another measure that can be taken to help reduce the risk of compromise is implement HTTP Authentication on any interface to AWStats. The latest AWStats can be obtained from the AWStats website here.

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 14 September 2006 23:18 )