American Cancer Society Website Visitors Should Check Their Bank Statements

Magecart hackers compromised the online shop of the American Cancer Society and may have had access to all online payments made by visitors. The e-skimming attack was caught early, but it”s not known how much data was intercepted.

An e-skimming group named Magecart inserted malicious code into the cancer society”s Cancer.org shop. The sole purpose of the intrusion was to intercept credit card payments, with personal data most likely ending up on the dark web.

Magecart is comprised of a series of criminal groups that focus on e-skimming attacks, designed to infiltrate websites and capture credit card information. They can gain entry through leaked credentials, a phishing campaign, or known vulnerabilities found in backend software used by the companies.

The intrusion was detected by researcher Willem de Groot, who explained to TechCrunch that the attackers mimicked legit analytics code to cover their tracks. Even if the code was obfuscated, the researcher figured out that a third-party server was receiving the information.

The American Cancer Society has yet to make an official statement, but researchers saw that the small piece of code was removed after a few days.

Interestingly enough, the FBI recently issued an advisory regarding the potential impact of e-skimming on small and medium businesses. The American Cancer Society intrusion goes to show that all types of organizations, and not just companies, are open to this kind of attack.