Becoming the Hacker

Backdooring the code

Once we obtain some access to a CMS instance, such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla, there are a couple of ways to persist or even escalate privileges horizontally or vertically. We can inject malicious PHP code, which will allow us to gain shell access at will. Code execution is great, but in some scenarios, we don't necessarily need it. There are other ways to exploit the application. Alternatively, we can modify the CMS core files to capture credentials in cleartext as users and administrators log in.

Both of these techniques require some kind of elevated privilege and that begs the question, why bother if we already have this type of access to the website? We'll look at a couple of situations where backdooring may help our ...