Hackers have turned Politifacts website into a trap for your PC
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.
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
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