A new wave of attacks is targeting web applications written with the ColdFusion development tool.

Researchers with security group Sans said that the company has received multiple reports of attacks which target vulnerabilities in older versions of ColdFusion.

The attacks are said to target two components in ColdFusion applications: the FCKEditor text editing tool, and the CKFinder file management tool. Once an application is compromised, the attackers can take complete control of the targeted server.

"The attacks we've been seeing in the wild end up with inserted <script > tags in documents on compromised web sites," wrote Sans researcher Bojan Zdrnja in a blog post.

"As you can probably guess by now, the script tags point to a whole chain of web sites which ultimately serve malware and try to exploit vulnerabilities on clients."

Administrators are advised to make sure that all applications are fully updated and patched. Sans is also advising admins to search their web servers for any forgotten or discarded ColdFusion applications which may be vulnerable to attack.