Three websites of the municipal bodies of the Indian province Andhra Pradesh have been infected by a hidden miner. According to the local newspaper Economic Times, the authorities found out about this a week ago, but the problem has not been solved yet.
Scripts for hidden crypto mining were discovered by security specialists on three portals belonging to the subdomain ap.gov.in. On September 10, they reported this to the authorities, but on the 16th it turned out that the problem has not been solved yet. For how long the attackers have been engaged in mining on these portals remains unknown.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
- State-owned websites have a lot of traffic, so hackers choose them. In particular, the subdomain, which owns three Indian municipal portal, has 160,000 conversions every month.
- Hidden mining is invisible to users until it begins to demand more resources and slows down the computer. According to a recent research, since the first half of 2017 the threat of hidden mining has grown by almost 1000%. At the same time, crypto-jacking brings an average of only $6 per day from one portal.