If you run a site powered by the Joomla content management system and haven’t yet applied a critical update for this software released less than two weeks ago, please take a moment to do that: A trivial exploit could let users inject malicious content into your site, turning it into a phishing or malware trap for visitors.
The patch released on July 31, 2013 applies to Joomla2.5.13 and earlier 2.5.x versions, as well as Joomla3.1.4 and earlier 3.x versions. Joomla credits discovery of the bug to Web security firm Versafe, which says a simple exploit targeting the vulnerability is already in use. Joomla versions 2.5.14 and 3.1.5. fix a serious bug that allows unprivileged users to upload arbitrary .PHP files just by adding a “.” (period) to the end of PHP filenames.For 2.5.x and 3.x versions of Joomla, it is possible for anyone with access to the media manager to upload and execute arbitrary code simply by appending a period to the end of the file name they would like to run. For sites powered by unsupported versions of Joomla (1.5.x, and a cursory Google search indicates that there are tens of thousands of these 1.5.x sites currently online), attackers do not even need to have an account on the Joomla server for this hack to work.
Simple Hack Threatens Outdated Joomla Sites
