Hackers have turned Politifacts website into a trap for your PC

[Madam45for2923]

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]

1. more russian cyber warfare

and the fascists love it

[yuiyoshida]

2. I HOPE DU is ready for this...sounds very nasty

n/t

[marybourg]

3. Thanx for the warning. nt

[cstanleytech]

4. This is why I use an extension in my browser that will not run any sites javascript unless

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]

5. What extension do you use?

[cstanleytech]

6. Its called scriptsafe and its for chrome.

[HAB911]

9. NoScript is equivalent for Firefox

[Jim Lane]

7. I did visit PolitiFact and noticed a terrible slowdown. Now I seek advice.

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]

8. Opera? I gave up on them when they were sold and switched to chrome but anyway back on topic

I would just reboot the computer and assuming the site did not install anything in the background it should work ok.