PhishWP Plug-in Hijacks WordPress E-Commerce Checkouts

A malicious plug-in found on a Russian cybercrime forum turns WordPress sites into phishing pages by creating fake online payment processes that convincingly impersonate trusted checkout services. Masquerading as legitimate e-commerce apps such as Stripe, the malware proceeds to steal customer payment data.
Called PhishWP, the WordPress plug-in was designed by Russian cybercriminals to be particularly deceptive, researchers from SlashNext revealed in findings published this week. In addition to mimicking the legitimate payment process that people would be familiar with to complete online transactions, it also has a key feature that make payment processes on transactions appear secure by allowing users to create one-time passwords (OTPs) during the process, they said.
Instead of processing payments, however, the payment gateway steals credit card numbers, expiration dates, CVVs, billing addresses, and more when people enter their personal data, thinking they are using a legitimate payment gateway. As soon as victims of the plug-in press "enter," the data is sent to a Telegram account controlled by the cybercriminals. Threat actors can use the plug-in like any WordPress plug-in, by either installing it on a legitimate but compromised WordPress site or creating a fraudulent site and using it there.
Related:Unconventional Cyberattacks Aim to Take Over PayPal Accounts
"PhishWP’s features make fake checkout pages look real, steal security codes, send your details to attackers right away, and trick you into thinking everything went fine," SlashNext security researcher Daniel Kelley wrote in the post.
This immediate turnaround of data "equips cybercriminals with the necessary credentials to make fraudulent purchases or resell the stolen data — sometimes within minutes of capturing it," notes Jason Soroko, senior fellow at Sectigo, a certificate life-cycle management (CLM) firm, making it a fast return on their investment to use the plug-in for nefarious purposes.
Other Key PhishWP Malware Features
OTP hijacking is one of the plug-in's key features, which when combined provide attackers with a turnkey solution for hijacking payment pages. Included in these are the aforementioned customizable checkout pages that simulate common payment processes through "highly convincing" fake interfaces, Kelley wrote.
Another feature of PhishWP, browser profiling, captures data beyond payment info for the replication of user environments for use in potential future fraud. This includes IP addresses, screen resolutions, and user agents.
The plug-in also gives the hijacked checkout process added legitimacy by using auto-response emails to send fake order confirmations to victims, which delays suspicion and thus detection of the attack. And as mentioned before, PhishWP also integrates with Telegram to instantly transmit stolen data to attackers for potential exploitation in real time.
Related:Thousands of BeyondTrust Systems Remain Exposed
The plug-in also comes in an obfuscated version for stealth purposes, or users can use its source code for advanced attacker customizations. Finally, PhishWP also offers multilanguage support so attackers can target victims globally.
Browser-Based Protection From E-Commerce Phishing
Creating malicious plug-ins for WordPress sites has become a cottage industry for cyberattackers, giving them a broad attack surface due to the popularity of the platform, which as of today is the basis for some 472 million websites, according to Colorlib, which provides WordPress themes.
One of the reasons that PhishWP — or any malicious WordPress plug-in — is so dangerous is that the malicious process is built directly into the browser, which makes it difficult to detect when it appears as a legitimate part of online engagement.
To defend against such threats, SlashNext recommends using phishing protection that also works from directly inside the browser to spot phishing sites before they reach the end user. These solutions, which are available within various browsers, work within browser memory to block malicious URLs before users engage with them. The company said this provides real-time threat detection and blocking capabilities that traditional security measures might miss.
Researchers Uncover Major Security Flaw in Illumina iSeq 100 DNA Sequencers
UN aviation agency investigating 'potential' security breach
CVE-2024-20439 Cisco Smart Licensing Utility Static Credential Vulnerability
CVE-2025-2783 Google Chromium Mojo Sandbox Escape Vulnerability
CVE-2019-9874 Sitecore CMS and Experience Platform (XP) Deserialization Vulnerability
CVE-2019-9875 Sitecore CMS and Experience Platform (XP) Deserialization Vulnerability
CVE-2025-30154 reviewdog/action-setup GitHub Action Embedded Malicious Code Vulnerability
CVE-2025-1316 Edimax IC-7100 IP Camera OS Command Injection Vulnerability
CVE-2024-48248 NAKIVO Backup and Replication Absolute Path Traversal Vulnerability
CVE-2017-12637 SAP NetWeaver Directory Traversal Vulnerability
CVE-2025-24472 Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
CWE-651 Exposure of WSDL File Containing Sensitive Information
CWE-1427 Improper Neutralization of Input Used for LLM Prompting
CWE-1241 Use of Predictable Algorithm in Random Number Generator
CWE-581 Object Model Violation: Just One of Equals and Hashcode Defined
CWE-831 Signal Handler Function Associated with Multiple Signals
CWE-781 Improper Address Validation in IOCTL with METHOD_NEITHER I/O Control Code
Free online web security scanner