WordPress Feature Leveraged to Launch DDoS Attacks
Abusers are leveraging a feature in the popular WordPress open-source content management system to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to multiple sources.
Todd Redfoot, chief information security officer at GoDaddy, told eWEEK that he started to see an uptick in WordPress attacks in late February.
The attacks leverage the XML-RPC (Remote Procedure Call) "pingback" functionality in WordPress to launch DDoS attacks. XML-RPC is legitimately used within WordPress as a mechanism for content owners to do a pingback of posts. The pingback allows content owners to track where their content is getting linked. Redfoot noted that GoDaddy put counter-measures in place in late February to mitigate the XML-RPC DDoS risk, but has seen another big spike in activity during the first two weeks of March.
