Hackers have turned Politifacts website into a trap for your PC
Source: Washington Post
PolitiFact has been an invaluable resource for debunking politicians' misstatements and falsehoods. But now, it seems, some unknown actor is trying to profit off the website's popularity by hooking visitors' computers into a virtual currency mining operation.
The hack was discovered Friday by security researcher Troy Mursch, who noticed that visiting Politifact.com caused his computer's CPU to run at its maximum capacity.
The anomaly left telltale signs of Coin Hive a piece of code that can be installed on websites that, when active, diverts unused computational power on visitors' computers toward generating a Bitcoin-like currency called Monero. Under ordinary circumstances, said Mursch, Coin Hive is used by some websites as an alternative to advertising. But in the case of PolitiFact, somebody has programmed the site to run multiple versions of Coin Hive simultaneously, basically bringing any visitor's computer to a processing halt.
The phenomenon was soon confirmed by security journalist Brian Krebs.
Link to tweet
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/13/hackers-have-turned-politifacts-website-into-a-trap-for-your-pc/?utm_term=.9de64c6009e6&tid=sm_tw
elmac
(4,642 posts)and the fascists love it
yuiyoshida
(41,759 posts)n/t
marybourg
(12,540 posts)cstanleytech
(26,080 posts)I specifically grant that site authorization either temporarily or permanent but either way I control it and if it opens up another site with a popup I am protected as it only authorizes the site I was on before.
The other bonus is has cut down on the number of annoying javascript popups I have to deal with
Madam45for2923
(7,178 posts)cstanleytech
(26,080 posts)HAB911
(8,811 posts)Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)I was using Opera for the first time in a long time, so I assumed it was a problem with that browser. This article makes me think it was probably these CoinHive hackers.
Does the malware operate only while you're logged in to an affected site, or is there a chance it left some code on my computer that i should (somehow) find and remove?
cstanleytech
(26,080 posts)I would just reboot the computer and assuming the site did not install anything in the background it should work ok.