Updated on December 9, 2015, 6:14 PM PST (UTC -8): We have edited this entry to include more technical details on the incident, including another infection chain.

As of this writing, the blog portion of the site is now redirecting all users to the main site. A spokesperson for The Independent has stated that “an advert appearing on that blogsite may have included malware.” They have also added that the the affected site was a “legacy” system that was rarely visited.

Updated on December 8, 2015, 7:15 PM PST (UTC -8): We have edited this entry to reflect the current status of communications with The Independent and the current threat. As of this writing, the site is still compromised and serving various malware threats to users.

The blog page of one of the leading media sites in the United Kingdom, The Independent has been compromised, which may put its readers‘s systems at risk of getting infected with ransomware. We have already informed The Independent about this security incident. However, the site is still currently compromised and users are still at risk.

It should be noted that only the blog part of the website–which uses WordPress–is impacted; the rest of The Independent’s online presence seem unaffected. WordPress is a very popular blogging platform that has seen more than its fair share of attacks and compromises from threat actors and cybercriminals looking to infect users. Other security researchers have noted that this is part of a larger campaign involving compromised WordPress sites.

I stumbled upon this while monitoring the activity of Angler Exploit Kit. Based on my investigation, since at least November 21, the compromised blog page redirected users to pages hosting the said exploit kit. If a user does not have an updated Adobe Flash Player, the vulnerable system will download the Cryptesla 2.2.0 ransomware (detected by Trend Micro as RANSOM_CRYPTESLA.YYSIX).

Figure 1. Infection diagram

The malware then changes the extension of encrypted files to “.vvv”.

The vulnerability involved in this particular instance is discovered to be CVE-2015-7645. This is also the latest vulnerability we detect to be added to Angler’s repertoire.

Figure 2. Our analysis showing the compromised blog page of The Independent

Figure 3. Screenshot of the ransom note

Angler Exploit Kit is the most active exploit kit to date that integrated Abobe Flash zero-day vulnerabilities related to the Hacking Team leak. In our 3Q threat roundup report, we observed a spike in the number of Angler-hosting links from May to September 2015.

We also tracked the number of hits to the TDS between compromised sites leading to Angler EK (not just The Independent blog) and have seen as many as 4,000 hits a day. The real number could be bigger.

Figure 4. Number of users redirected from compromised sites leading to Angler EK

Continuous monitoring of this incident has revealed another infection chain. Rather than immediately downloading TeslaCrypt ransomware to the affected system, the exploit kit first downloads BEDEP malware.

First spotted in 2014, BEDEP became more prominent early this year due to its in use in exploit kit attacks. We even noted that it was the final payload for an attack involving the Angler Exploit Kit at the start of the year. In our BEDEP Security Brief, we pointed out that “BEDEP and its strains are known to skirt detection because of its heavy encryption. It also comes manipulated Microsoft file properties to make it appear legitimate upon inspection.” In this particular infection chain, the BEDEP variant arrives via fileless infection in an effort to avoid detection.

BEDEP malware is known to download other malware—a routine demonstrated in this particular incident. The BEDEP variant downloads ransomware into the affected system. But instead of TeslaCrypt, it downloads another notorious ransomware, CryptoLocker. This malware demands that the user pay a fee of US$499 for decryption; the fee increases after a certain period has lapsed.

It’s hard to determine the exact reason behind adding BEDEP to the infection chain but it’s highly possible that the cybercriminals wanted to take advantage of the different features of the malware, which include information theft and backdoor capabilities.

We at Trend Micro have provided protection to user systems by blocking all known related malicious websites and detecting the final payload.

Additional insights and analysis by Feike Hacquebord, Brooks Li, David Agni, and Anthony Melgarejo.

Hat tip to Jérôme Segura of MalwareBytes for his research on the compromised WordPress sites campaign.