Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Cryptocurrency Ecosystem => Privacy Coins Forum => Monero Forum => Topic started by: Goodcat49 on February 13, 2018, 04:14:33 PM
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In a hack attack, the government websites, including the Information Commissioner's Office and thousands of other sites around the world have been running a malware program that uses the visitor’s computer to mine Monero, a cryptocurrency, which like Bitcoin is blockchain based, but with a greater concentration on transaction privacy.
“This type of attack isn’t new — but this is the biggest I’ve seen. A single company being hacked has meant thousands of sites impacted across the UK, Ireland and the United States,” said Helme in an interview with Sky News.
The malware program Coinhive was the cause of the website’s infection. It hides in a website’s code and steals the processing power of its visitors' devices to mine cryptocurrency. Coinhive is a cryptojacking script that works by making crypto mining rigs out of the computers of website visitors while giving the hackers an opportunity to control the processing power of millions of machines.
How did they do it?
The explosion in value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the financial market has not been unmarked by hackers looking to get some quick money. Their best option is to have other people's computers do the job. The hackers managed to perform this scam by installing malware into websites which then means that, nameless to them, visitors' computers are put to work mining cryptocurrencies.
The Information Commissioner's website, as well as others, seems to have been infected by crypto-mining code inserted into some accessibility software they all use.
This kind of attack has become much more frequent and while it appears not be a reason for data loss or damage to computer systems, it does lead to more slowly running process.
Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: https://coinidol.com/government-websites-have-been-hijacked/
(https://coinidol.com/upload/resize_cache/iblock/e85/900_900_1/e85cee03237ba16803ebd4f34c93326e.jpg)