Researchers have discovered that hundreds of Government websites in India were infected with cryptocurrency mining malware called Cryptojacking
Researchers have discovered that hundreds of Government websites in India were infected with cryptocurrency mining malware called Cryptojacking. Hackers have been silently mining cryptocurrency in government websites such as Tirupati Municipal Corporation, municipal administration of Andhra Pradesh (AP), and Macherla municipality. Here the hackers use Victims computers processing power to mine cryptocurrencies. Victims are tricked into clicking a malicious link which downloads malicious code to the computer or are tricked in to visit a website that contains javascript which mines cryptocurrencies without users permission “Hackers target government websites for mining cryptocurrency because those websites get high traffic and mostly people trust them, Earlier, we saw a lot of government websites getting defaced (hacked). Now, injecting cryptojackers is more fashionable as the hacker can make money” said Security researcher Indrajeet Bhuyan. When Economic Times notified the incident to JA Chowdary, IT advisor to the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh the response was “Thanks for notifying us about the AP website hacking,”. According to source code search engine PublicWWW more than 119 websites (besides Government websites) in India are infected with Cryptojacking malware. Security researchers Shakil Ahmed, Anisha Sarma and Indrajeet Bhuyan discovered the vulnerabilities on AP government website. The three websites which were running cryptojacking malware are subdomains of ap.gov.in, and one of the websites have over 1,60,000 visits per month. It is unclear how much cryptocurrency was mined and how long the website were infected with the malware. For the latest cyber threats and the latest hacking news please follow us on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
You may be interested in reading:42 Million Records of Credential Stuffing Data Discovered on the Free Hosting Service Kayo.moe