Magento Security Check: Protect Your Store from Vulnerabilities

If you own or manage a Magento store, a serious attack doesn't stop at the cleanup bill. It can mean stolen customer data, injected checkout scripts, lost orders, and days of downtime.

Your site can look like it's running perfectly while it quietly earns money for someone else. That risk is harder to ignore after CosmicSting, a Magento vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution.

So let's start with the parts you can actually check: the threats worth watching in 2026, the hardening steps that matter most, a practical checklist, and a free malware scan with Adobe Security Scan.

1. Top security threats for eCommerce
2. Best security practices for your Magento store
3. Your Magento security checklist
4. How to audit your Magento store's security
5. How to scan Magento for malware and vulnerabilities
6. Key takeaways

Top security threats for eCommerce

Magento is a secure platform. The share of Magento stores carrying malware has dropped below 2%, according to Sansec, largely thanks to Adobe's engineers, who release patches for known vulnerabilities on a steady schedule.

But attackers keep hunting for new holes, and starting in 2026 Adobe moved to a monthly security patch schedule to keep up. Here are the threats you should watch for.

E-skimming

E-skimming - also called web skimming or Magecart - is credit card fraud pulled off by exploiting a security hole in a store's code. Attackers plant malicious script and steal customer card and personal data the moment it's entered on the checkout page.

Magento has long been the most targeted platform for skimmer attacks, and that hasn't changed. In the CosmicSting wave, Sansec counted 4,275 Adobe Commerce and Magento stores hit with skimmers, and roughly 5% of all Adobe Commerce and Magento stores ended up with a payment skimmer on their checkout page in a single summer - the work of seven separate attack groups. Named victims included Ray-Ban, National Geographic, Cisco, and Segway.

The trick isn't new - it was first reported back in April 2015, and grew fast enough that the FBI warned online retailers. What's changed is the scale and the automation behind it.

CosmicSting and the modern threat landscape

Nothing has reshaped Magento security since this guide first ran like CosmicSting (CVE-2024-34102). It's a critical bug - CVSS 9.8 - that lets attackers read sensitive files and, chained with other flaws, run arbitrary code and steal customer and payment data. It saw widespread exploitation after disclosure, and many stores were hit simply because they patched late.

The threats keep coming. In March 2026 Sansec disclosed PolyShell, an unauthenticated flaw that lets attackers upload executable files through the REST API, opening the door to remote code execution or account takeover.

There's a bigger shift behind the rising count, and it's worth naming: AI has changed the economics of attacking a store. Finding an exploitable flaw used to take real skill and time - now it's faster and, more to the point, cheaper, so more stores get probed more often. The large commercial models put guardrails on this, but open models don't, and the tooling gets better month over month. We don't expect that curve to bend back.

The takeaway is blunt. Patch on time. With Adobe's monthly cadence, "we'll get to it next quarter" is no longer a plan.

Ransomware

Ransomware is malicious software that blocks access to a system until a ransom is paid, usually by encrypting the data on your drives. You lose your documents, databases, and applications until you pay - or restore from a clean backup.

These attacks keep getting more frequent. Cybersecurity Ventures projects a ransomware attack every 2 seconds by 2031, up from roughly every 11 seconds a few years ago.

They also do far more damage. The average ransom payment now runs to around $1.8 million in 2025, and the same firm puts global ransomware damage at about $57 billion in 2025, on track for $275 billion a year by 2031.

Here's the part that's actually shifting in defenders' favor: fewer victims pay now. In 2025 the majority - about 64% - refused the ransom and recovered from clean backups and an incident-response plan instead. That's the playbook to copy. The most common entry points are still email phishing, exposed RDP, and unpatched software vulnerabilities.

DDoS

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack floods your servers with requests from thousands of devices - often hijacked IoT gadgets - until the whole site goes offline. Customers can't buy, and you lose money directly. By 2025, DDoS downtime runs about $22,000 per minute, so a half-hour outage can cost a mid-market store well over $600,000 - and it often leaves the site open to malware on top.

And the volume keeps climbing. Cloudflare mitigated 47.1 million DDoS attacks in 2025, more than double the year before, capped by a record 31.4 Tbps assault. The threat spikes hardest during peak sales periods, and a share of victims still get a ransom demand before the flood even starts.

You don't fight this at the origin server - by the time the traffic reaches Magento, it's too late. Put a modern edge in front of the store. We use Cloudflare: it absorbs the flood before it hits your infrastructure and brings a whole ecosystem of uptime and bot-mitigation tooling with it.

Phishing

Phishing is one of the oldest tricks, and still one of the most effective. It exploits people, not code, to grab logins and passwords or to plant ransomware and other malware. It still works at scale: 16% of breaches start with phishing, and about 60% involve a human element, according to Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report.

Attackers are eager to exploit any online business that hasn't trained its staff on phishing awareness. Once a criminal gets admin-level credentials, the damage to your store can be severe.

Brute-force

Brute-force is a blunt method: guess passwords until one works - and its cousin, credential stuffing, replays passwords leaked from other breaches. It's surprisingly effective: 88% of attacks on web applications involve stolen credentials, and stolen credentials are the way in for 22% of all breaches, per Verizon's 2025 report.

Magento stores are no exception. Reused and leaked admin passwords are a standing risk - credential stuffing alone accounts for a median 19% of login attempts against exposed sites.

Best security practices for your Magento store

There's no single switch that removes every risk. But a handful of habits make your store a far less attractive target. Read Adobe's Security and compliance guide for the full picture, then work through the practices below.

Patch Magento on time

Newly discovered vulnerabilities and slow patching are what let attackers in - CosmicSting proved it. Since January 2026, Adobe ships security patches monthly, so build a monthly review into your routine. Watch for updates across your whole stack too: the server OS, PHP, Apache or Nginx, Redis, and every extension you run.

One honest caveat from watching this closely: Adobe doesn't back Magento the way it once did, and some security issues sit open for months. In practice the community often closes a hole before an official fix lands - so track independent sources like Sansec, not just Adobe's release notes, or you'll hear about the threat that hits you last.

Harden the Magento Admin panel

Don't log in to your Magento Admin from any random or public computer. Use trusted machines with a malware scanner or antivirus, patch them regularly, and keep sketchy software off them.

Lock the Admin down with an IP allowlist of the computers approved to reach it, and change the default admin URL.

Turn on two-factor authentication. A second, one-time code from an app like Google Authenticator (or a dedicated hardware key) means a stolen password alone won't get anyone in. It's built into Magento from 2.3 onward - and in 2026 it isn't advanced security, it's the baseline:

Use a strong password that can't be brute-forced, and change it periodically to limit the blast radius of any leak. Don't store FTP passwords in FTP clients - malware hunts for exactly that. And add CAPTCHA to admin and customer logins.

Restrict access with user roles

Give people the least access they need to do their job. Magento's role-based permissions let you scope each admin user to specific resources, so a content editor never gets the keys to payment or system settings. Fewer full-access accounts means fewer ways in if a single credential is stolen, and a cleaner audit trail when something looks off.

Secure your server and connection

Serve every page over HTTPS. It encrypts data in transit through TLS - without it, credentials and card data travel as plain text that anyone on the wire can read. It's also a ranking signal, so there's no reason to run HTTP in 2026. Adobe Commerce has built-in HTTP-to-HTTPS handling; Open Source stores set it up through the server or a certificate.

Then harden the server itself:

• Apply OS and software patches promptly, and monitor for new security issues in your stack.
• Manage files only over secure protocols (SSH/SFTP/HTTPS), and disable FTP where you can.
• Keep unnecessary software off the production server; isolate anything extra in a separate VM.
• Audit for leftovers from development - open logs, git directories, database dumps, stray PHP files - and remove them.
• Put a Web Application Firewall in front of the store to filter traffic and block bots, scanners, and exploit attempts before they reach Magento.

Encrypt sensitive data and stay PCI compliant

Magento uses an encryption key to protect passwords and other sensitive values. Rotate that key if you suspect it's been exposed, and store it safely - not in a repo or a shared doc.

If you take card payments, PCI DSS isn't optional, and in 2026 it's stricter than ever. The simplest path for most stores is to keep card data off your servers entirely by using a hosted or tokenized payment method, so the sensitive data never touches your infrastructure.

Keep your extension footprint small

We build Magento extensions for a living, so take this as the unpopular opinion it is: the fewer third-party modules you run, the safer your store. Every extension is code you don't fully control and a potential way in - if not today, then after some future update introduces a flaw. A lean Magento install with a minimal, well-chosen module set is far easier to keep secure than a store carrying a dozen extensions "just in case." Before you install anything, make it earn its place - and pair a lean footprint with active monitoring like Sansec, which watches for emerging threats across the ecosystem.

Watch for signs of an attack

Run periodic reviews for signs of a breach. Here's what to look for:

• Unauthorized admin logins and unexpected new admin users. Adobe Commerce provides an Action Log that tracks suspicious activity.
• Odd system logins (FTP, SSH), uploads, or commands.
• Unexpected file changes - a file integrity monitor will alert you to possible malware.
• Anything strange in your hosting provider's logs. Consider an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) on your network.

Have an incident plan

Most stores still aren't ready for this: roughly 75% of SMBs have no incident response plan. Preparation is what turns a breach into a bad week instead of a closed business - in 2025 53% of ransomware victims restored from backups, and the average remediation bill fell to $1.84 million as more of them recovered without paying. If you don't know where to start, NIST's Guide for Cybersecurity Event Recovery is a solid template.

If a breach is underway, contact your IT security team and your hosting provider's support to scope it. In parallel, in your own store you can:

• Block access to the store to preserve evidence and limit data theft.
• Back up the compromised server as evidence of installed malware or altered files.
• Review logs and file changes to work out how and when the store was breached.
• Wipe everything and reinstall from a clean backup.
• Apply all security patches so the same attack can't repeat.
• Reset every access credential.
• Notify your customers as the law requires.

Your Magento security checklist

Short on time? Run through this checklist first - it's the 80/20 of Magento security.

• [ ] You're on a supported Magento version and apply security patches monthly.
• [ ] Two-factor authentication is on for every admin account.
• [ ] The default admin URL is changed and the Admin is behind an IP allowlist.
• [ ] Admin users have role-scoped permissions, not blanket access.
• [ ] Every page is served over HTTPS/TLS.
• [ ] A Web Application Firewall sits in front of the store.
• [ ] Card data is tokenized or hosted off your servers (PCI DSS).
• [ ] File integrity monitoring and the Action Log are active.
• [ ] You have tested, off-site backups and a written incident plan.
• [ ] You run a malware and vulnerability scan on a schedule (next section).

How to audit your Magento store's security

An audit is a periodic, deliberate pass over the points above - not a one-time setup. Run one quarterly, and after every major change or extension install. A practical pass looks like this:

1. Confirm you're patched. Check your version against Adobe's released versions and apply anything missing.
2. Review admin users. Remove stale accounts, and check that permissions still match roles.
3. Read the logs. Scan the Action Log and server logs for logins, uploads, and changes you can't explain.
4. Check file integrity. Compare against a known-good baseline to catch injected code.
5. Scan for malware and known vulnerabilities. Use Adobe Security Scan (below), and a second-opinion scanner for coverage.

Security is a process, not a checkbox - the audit is how you keep it honest between patches.

How to scan Magento for malware and vulnerabilities

The fastest place to start is Adobe Security Scan, a free tool for both Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source. It's maintained by Adobe together with Sansec, a leading eCommerce malware detection company, and it runs a battery of security tests to check your store for:

• Malware and vulnerabilities on the storefront
• Out-of-date security patches
• Potentially vulnerable extensions
• Digital skimming injections
• Security misconfigurations

It also runs on a schedule and keeps historical reports so you can track progress over time.

Adobe Security Scan is a first-party tool, so it's the right first stop - but be clear about what it can't do. Every scanner works from a database of known signatures, which means it's blind to a vulnerability disclosed a few days ago that hasn't been added yet. That 3-to-5-day gap between a flaw going public and landing in the scanner is exactly the window attackers race to exploit - so a clean scan is never a substitute for patching on time. For a second opinion we lean on Sansec: it's actively maintained and often flags emerging threats early, sometimes before they're formally published. Run it alongside Adobe Security Scan, and see our roundup of free third-party malware scanners for Magento for more options.

Prerequisites

To use the tool, you first need a Commerce Marketplace account. Register at account.magento.com.

On the account page, open the Security Scan tab and skim the overview, FAQ, and onboarding documents Adobe provides.

Click Go to security scan and accept the terms to grant the scanner access.

Scan your store for security issues

Add your store to the scanner with the Add site button.

Only owners and authorized people can run the scan, which is enforced through an ownership verification step - you add a special tag to your store's source code.

Verify store ownership

You can verify by adding an HTML comment or META tag to every page of your store. In the admin, go to Content > Design > Configuration, pick the Website and Store View to verify, and click Edit.

Scroll to the HTML Head section, find Scripts and Style Sheets, and paste the HTML comment or META tag from the Security Scan verification page.

Save the config and clear your cache. Open the source of any page in your store and confirm the verification code is present in the <head> section.

Go back to the verification page and click Verify Confirmation Code. On success, you'll see a confirmation:

Configure scan options

Below verification, the tool offers a few options:

• Set up SSH Scan for a database scan and file integrity check.
• Set up Automatic Security Scan on a schedule: weekly (recommended), daily, or off.
• Turn on report notifications to get security updates by email.

After verifying ownership and configuring the scan, press Submit.

Launch the scan

Back on the Monitored Websites page, find your store, open the Action menu, and select Run scan to start immediately - or wait for the scheduled run.

Read the Security Scan report

When the scan finishes, open the report. The tool also summarizes findings in a Risk column for each site.

A site that's never been scanned shows Risk as Unknown and status N/A; a running scan shows In Progress. The report is available as a web page and as a downloadable PDF, and it covers:

• Failed Scans - vulnerabilities found in your store, with a short description of each.

• Unidentified Results - possible weak points the tool couldn't confirm because something in your store blocked the check.

• Successful Scans - known vulnerabilities your store is protected against.

For some active vulnerabilities the tool tells you how to fix them. When it can't, bring in IT security experts.

Key takeaways

Don't assume your development agency has security covered - most excel at building stores that sell, not at hardening them against attackers. Basic measures genuinely lower your risk, and the fundamentals haven't changed even as the threats have:

• Patch monthly, and watch independent sources like Sansec - Adobe isn't always first, and CosmicSting hit the stores that waited.
• Run fewer extensions. Every third-party module is attack surface - and yes, we sell them, so we don't say that lightly.
• Turn on 2FA and change the default admin URL today.
• Scope admin access with roles, and serve everything over HTTPS.
• Scan on a schedule with Adobe Security Scan, but don't mistake a clean scan for a safe store - it can't see a vulnerability that's only days old. Patch anyway.
• Keep tested backups and a written incident plan.

The risk never drops to zero, so for a store handling real revenue it's worth investing in security expertise too. Until then, you can cover the basics with free tools like Adobe Security Scan and start protecting your store today.

What to read next: compare free online malware scanners for Magento to pair a second-opinion scan with Adobe Security Scan.