Popup stealing customer info?

Hi @psalterproject

I understand your concern about the suspicious popup, and it’s crucial to address this issue promptly.

While your site is currently using PayPal Standard and not PayPal Payments, it appears that there is malicious code that replaces the “Proceed to PayPal” button with a custom “Place order” button, which may attempt to steal credit card information.

A third party may have gained access to your site and modified, for example, WooCommerce template files to overwrite the checkout behavior.

Our primary recommendation is to disable PayPal Standard in favor of PayPal Payments and get in touch with the official WooCommerce support to investigate what could have potentially modified the PayPal Standard gateway. They can help you identify and resolve potential security vulnerabilities on your site.

Please let us know if any issues or unexpected behavior persist when using PayPal Payments instead of PayPal Standard.
Thanks!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Thank you so much for your prompt response! Yes, I have already reached out to Woocommerce and they had some helpful troubleshooting suggestions. It seems the problem may actually be caused by the Storefront theme, which surprises me, but in any case I will reach out to them next.

I didn’t realize that PayPal Payments wasn’t being used. I wasn’t the one who had set PayPal up, I just assumed that it was PayPal Payments because that was the plugin installed and activated. Are there further steps required to switch to PayPal Payments instead of Standard? We don’t have a “Standard” or any other PayPal plugin installed.

Hi @psalterproject

Thank you for providing more information.

Although the issue appears to occur with the Storefront theme, it could potentially affect any theme and isn’t necessarily exclusive to Storefront. Your specific installation of the Storefront theme is likely impacted because it was the active theme when “the intrusion” occurred. It seems an intruder inserted malicious code into the template files of the Storefront theme, which causes the unusual behavior to disappear when you switch themes.

To address this issue, you can try reinstalling the latest version of the Storefront theme: https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/theme/storefront.4.2.0.zip

Before you proceed, ensure you create a backup of your site. To reinstall the theme, you don’t need to remove it. Simply download the theme from the link above, go to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme, and upload the .zip file you downloaded. Then confirm the installation from the theme.

If the malicious code was indeed present in the Storefront theme files, this action should remove it.

However, in theory, this code could be located in various places. If reinstalling the theme doesn’t resolve the issue, I suggest reinstalling WooCommerce as an additional step, as we have seen similar incidents with modified WooCommerce template files.
If the problem persists, please download all your plugin/theme files via FTP and scan all PHP files for potentially identifying data, such as the ID from the “scam button”: dg4ecq877e0j
But this may not necessarily yield any results.

In any case, please let us know how this works for you!

Regarding the PayPal Payments setup, please have a look at the setup guide here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-paypal-payments/#connect-paypal-account

When your PayPal account is connected to the PayPal Payments plugin, you can disable the “PayPal Standard” gateway and enable “PayPal” from the WooCommerce > Payments tab. Please ensure the Checkout button location is enabled in the Standard Payments tab of the PayPal gateway settings.

The old PayPal Standard integration is a core part of WooCommerce, not a plugin. This integration is disabled on newer WooCommerce installations but will still appear on older WooCommerce installations. It is no longer updated, though, so we recommend using PayPal Payments as it implements the latest PayPal features in one integration.

I hope this helps you out!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Thank you so much!! Reinstalling the theme worked. I thought that since I had updated the theme, that would be good enough, but I suppose the malicious code was added after it was updated. But a clean installation seems to have resolved the issue. I will keep a careful eye out and also reinstall other files if necessary.

Next I will go get PayPal payments set up. ?? Thanks again!!