Skip to main content

Thousands of Government Websites Hacked to Mine Cryptocurrencies


There was a time when hackers simply defaced websites to get attention, then they started hijacking them to spread banking trojan and ransomware, and now the trend has shifted towards injecting scripts into sites to mine cryptocurrencies.

Thousands of government websites around the world have been found infected with a specific script that secretly forces visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency for attackers.

The cryptocurrency mining script injection found on over 4,000 websites, including those belonging to UK's National Health Service (NHS), the Student Loan Company, and data protection watchdog Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Queensland legislation, as well as the US government's court system.

Users who visited the hacked websites immediately had their computers' processing power hijacked, also known as cryptojacking, to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge, potentially generating profits for the unknown hacker or group of hackers.

It turns out that hackers managed to hijack a popular third-party accessibility plugin called "Browsealoud," used by all these affected websites, and injected their cryptocurrency-mining script into its code.

Browsealoud is a popular third-party browser plugin that helps blind and partially-sighted users access the web by converting site text to audio.

The script that was inserted into the compromised Browsealoud software belongs to CoinHive—a browser-based Monero mining service that offers website administrators to earn revenue by utilizing CPU resources of visitors.

The mining software was found in more than 4,200 websites, including The City University of New York (cuny.edu), Uncle Sam's court information portal (uscourts.gov), the UK's Student Loans Company (slc.co.uk), privacy watchdog The Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) and the Financial Ombudsman Service (financial-ombudsman.org.uk), UK NHS services, Manchester.gov.uk, NHSinform.scot, agriculture.gov.ie, Croydon.gov.uk, ouh.nhs.uk, legislation.qld.gov.au, the list goes on.

The full list of affected websites can be found here.

After UK-based infosec consultant Scott Helme raised the alarm about this hack when one of his friends mentioned getting anti-virus alerts on a UK Government website, BrowseAloud’s operator Texthelp took down its site to resolve the issue.

Here’s what Texthelp's chief technology officer Martin McKay said in a blog post:

"In light of other recent cyber attacks all over the world, we have been preparing for such an incident for the last year. Our data security action plan was actioned straight away and was effective, the risk was mitigated for all customers within a period of four hours."

"Texthelp has in place continuously automated security tests for Browsealoud - these tests detected the modified file, and as a result, the product was taken offline."

This action eventually removed Browsealoud from all websites immediately, addressing the security issue without its customers having to take any action.

The company also assured that "no customer data has been accessed or lost," and that its customers will receive a further update as soon as the security investigation gets completed.

YOU MAY ALSO READ :
Download 10 Best Android Hacking Apps for Android Mobile
Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Guide] How to Protect Your Devices Against Meltdown and Spectre Attacks

Recently uncovered two huge processor vulnerabilities called Meltdown and Spectre have taken the whole world by storm, while vendors are rushing out to patch the vulnerabilities in its products. The issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, FreeBSD, and more), smartphones and other computing devices made in the past 20 years. What are Spectre and Meltdown? We have explained both, Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715), exploitation techniques in our previous article. In short, Spectre and Meltdown are the names of security vulnerabilities found in many processors from Intel, ARM and AMD that could allow attackers to steal your passwords, encryption keys and other private information. Both attacks abuse 'speculative execution' to access privileged memory—including those allocated for the kernel—from a low privileged user process like a malicious app running...
Post a Comment
Read more

Check your Gmail Account Email is Secured or Not After 50 Lacs Gmail account Hacking

World Biggest Hacking 50Lacs Gmail Account Hacked by Russian Hackers. Hack Gmail List Post in Bitsec security forum. This hacking is done in 10 September 2014. Anyone can download  5 Million hacking gmail  list . Your password is compromised publicaly.  So how do you know your account is hacked is or not. This is one of the biggest hack in Gmail account.  So hackers use your gmail account password in illegal purposes. So I recommend you to check your gmail account password. Here we provide a website to check your email in the hacking list. If your name in the hacking list ,so change your password of gmail. Check your name in Gmail Hacking list  Follow the given steps. 1 Go to this website  ISLEAKED.COM  or  haveibeenpwned.com/ 2. Type of email and click on check it. 3. Now you know your account is hacked or not. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE : Make Fake FB Account in 1 Min Without Mobile and email Facebook Moves To Decide What ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unlocked phones vs. locked phones: Why you should care

Should you get an unlocked phone? The US wireless market is more competitive than ever, which is great news for consumers who have lots of choices when it comes choosing a service provider. But one barrier still exists when trying to switch carriers: the locked smartphone. The end of wireless contracts marked a watershed trend for consumers because it finally opened the door for them to more easily shop around for alternative wireless carriers. But the software locks that carriers put on phones restricting its use on other networks still prevent many consumers from having total freedom when it comes to choosing a provider. Now Verizon, the only wireless carrier that sold its phones unlocked out of the box, is reversing course. The company  said earlier this week  it would begin locking the phones it sells to consumers for an undetermined period of time, which will prevent them from using a SIM card from another carrier. But Verizon promised it would eventually ...
Post a Comment
Read more