Government websites mined cryptocurrency after being hijacked by hackers

[alyssa85]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/11/government-websites-secretly-mining-cryptocurrency/

A host of government websites were found to be running a power-pinching program that uses visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, a process known as "cryptojacking".

Thousands of websites, including the Information Commissioner's Office, the Scottish NHS helpline and the Student Loans company along with hundreds of other central and local government sites appear to have been hijacked by hackers to mine cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The services were infected with malware called Coinhive, which sits on a website and steals the processing power of its visitors' devices to mine Bitcoin or alternative coins that are stored in an anonymous digital wallet, to be withdrawn at a later date.

This is the kind of thing that gives cryptocurrency a bad name and makes govts mad.

[Kprawn]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/11/government-websites-secretly-mining-cryptocurrency/

A host of government websites were found to be running a power-pinching program that uses visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, a process known as "cryptojacking".

Thousands of websites, including the Information Commissioner's Office, the Scottish NHS helpline and the Student Loans company along with hundreds of other central and local government sites appear to have been hijacked by hackers to mine cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The services were infected with malware called Coinhive, which sits on a website and steals the processing power of its visitors' devices to mine Bitcoin or alternative coins that are stored in an anonymous digital wallet, to be withdrawn at a later date.

This is the kind of thing that gives cryptocurrency a bad name and makes govts mad.

Do not blame the tool, blame the people who are misusing that tool. You cannot stop people from doing stupid things. The

gain from this mining must be miniscule, because I experimented with Bitcoin mining on a desktop pc and the most I could

get from a average computer was 50 hashes/s. Even if you had 1000's of computers doing this, your gains would not even

be worth the risk. 

[fiulpro]

I do think it's inevitable.
With everything good there will always be things that are gonna be bad.
There are going to be people out there who will try to you know make things worse.
Better or worse they try to make things in their profit no matter what methods they use.
So I don't think that the sole culprit is the cryptocurrency, it's the people who do these kinds of things.
If government is gonna be mad then take action against people like these.. not...on.. cryptos

[zenrol28]

Its the government's fault for having poor security. And they're blaming it on cryptocurrencies. Everytime government's vulnerabilities were exposed they blame the attacker, instead of admitting their failures. They're mad because their weaknesses were being exposed despite of having huge funds from people's taxes.

[partysumo]

Well obviously hackers are the guys doing the bad deed, but isn't it the government's main responsibility to ensure that their websites are safe? If your IT security is lacking, sorry but someone will definitely take advantage of it. If it would have been "cryptojacking", it would have been something else.

[yoseph]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/11/government-websites-secretly-mining-cryptocurrency/

A host of government websites were found to be running a power-pinching program that uses visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, a process known as "cryptojacking".

Thousands of websites, including the Information Commissioner's Office, the Scottish NHS helpline and the Student Loans company along with hundreds of other central and local government sites appear to have been hijacked by hackers to mine cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The services were infected with malware called Coinhive, which sits on a website and steals the processing power of its visitors' devices to mine Bitcoin or alternative coins that are stored in an anonymous digital wallet, to be withdrawn at a later date.

This is the kind of thing that gives cryptocurrency a bad name and makes govts mad.

I recently had that experience this past few weeks, a website that i normally downloaded movies from started to slow down my laptop when i opened it to the point that i wasn't able to do anything buy had to shut down my computer after installing an antivirus i found out that it was a coinminer.