Hackers in the criminal underground are selling an exploit that extracts the master password needed to control Parallels’ Plesk Panel, a software suite used to remotely administer hosted servers at a large number of Internet hosting firms. The attack comes amid reports from multiple sources indicating a spike in Web site compromises that appear to trace back to Plesk installations.
A miscreant on one very exclusive cybercrime forum has been selling the ability to hack any site running Plesk Panel version 10.4.4 and earlier. The hacker, a longtime member of the forum who has a history of selling reliable software exploits, has even developed a point-and-click tool that he claims can recover the admin password from a vulnerable Plesk installation, as well as read and write files to the Plesk Panel (see screen shot at right).
