A Russian state administration website was hacked in order to mine cryptocurrency. It was discovered when the users complained that their computers started lagging and they were being redirected by the website. IT experts looked into the matter to find a virus to mine cryptocurrency.
This was later confirmed on 7th June by the Russian News Society, Gubernia. The pop-up that showed up on the website was actually a cryptocurrency mining launch page which ran in the background and was hidden from the users.
An employee of the Khabarovsk region administration support department stated that “In the process of the investigation, it was found out that a mechanism was introduced to the site when the malicious program began to work on the user’s computer from a third-party infected site, which caused crypto-currency mining.
This virus had already been active for 10 days and the website normally has 600 users per day. The exact number of computers that have been affected by the virus is still unknown. However, the IT experts have reported that a great number of cryptocurrencies must have been mined in those 10 days.
All the users were asked to block any pop-up that they see on their computer and another safe way to avoid such viruses is to keep antivirus preinstalled in the computer that performs regular scans and detects any malware. As cryptocurrency mining becomes common, more ways of hacking and illegal use are coming to surface.
