With the help of Salesforce Sites, businesses can build specialized communities where partners and clients could work collaboratively.

But when these communities are no longer required, they are frequently preserved rather than shut down. These sites aren't examined for vulnerabilities since they aren't maintained, and the administrators don't update the security measures in accordance with contemporary guidelines.

Apparently, Varonis Threat Labs on its recent findings discovered that since these ghost sites were not properly deactivated, they were easily accessible to attackers who were using them to put illicit data, exploiting the sites.

They added that the exposed data did not only consist of the old data of the sites, but also fresh records that were disclosed to guest user, who shared configuration in the Salesforce environment.

Salesforce Ghost Sites

According to Varonis Threat Labs, Salesforce ghost sites are created when a company, instead of using unappealing internet URLs uses a custom domain name. This is done so that the organization’s partners could browse the sites. . “This is accomplished by configuring the DNS record so that ‘partners.acme.org’ [for example] points to the lovely, curated Salesforce Community Site at “partners.acme.org. 00d400.live.siteforce.com[…]With the DNS record changed, partners visiting “partners.acme.org” will be able to browse Acme’s Salesforce site. The trouble begins when Acme decides to choose a new Community Site vendor,” the researchers said.

Companies might switch out a Salesforce Experience Site for an alternative, just like they would with any other technology. Varonis Threat Labs stated, "Acme subsequently updates the DNS record of 'partners.acme.org' to link toward a new site that might function in their AWS environment." The Salesforce Site is no longer present from the users' perspective, and a new Community page is now accessible. The new page may not be functioning in the environment or connected to Salesforce in any way, and no blatant integrations are visible.

However, the study found that a lot of businesses only modify DNS entries. “They do not remove the custom domain in Salesforce, nor do they deactivate the site. Instead, the site continues to exist, pulling data and becoming a ghost site,” a researcher said.

Attackers exploit these sites simply by changing the host header. They mislead Salesforce into believing that the site was accessed as https://partners.acme.org/ making the sites accessible to the attackers.

Although these sites can also be accessed through their whole internal URLs, an intruder would find it difficult to recognize these URLs. However, locating ghost sites is significantly simpler when utilizing tools that index and archive DNS information, like SecurityTrails and comparable technologies.

What is the Solution

Varonis Threat Labs advised that the sites that are no longer in use should be properly deactivated. They also recommended to track all Salesforce sites and their respective users’ permissions, involving both community and guest users. Moreover, the researchers created a guide on ‘protecting your active Salesforce Communities against recon and data theft.’