Politifact hacked: another browser miner spotted

Politifact, the website focusing on fact checking of speeches made by big political figures, was subtly hacked just as it has previously happened with The Pirate Bay and the American cinema company. A mining virus was injected on its server, so that while the users read about the recent Donald Trump’s or Hillary Clinton’s lies and miscalculations, the hackers hijack the resources of the readers’ computers and get Monero. Monero altcoin has been chosen once again, as noted in our previous reports on the theme, it’s good for hiding tracks and has the required code structure to allow such viruses to work.

As the reports started to appear, the site management apparently discovered what was changed under their noses and removed it. But currently, nobody is sure where can this miner appear next. If your computer is working slowly on a seemingly simple website, it’s better to exit the website. To check the resource consumption, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc on Windows and choose the “Performance” tab. If the processor is constantly loaded over 70% and nothing more difficult than browser is running, one can assume the injected website is opened.