4200 websites, including U.S. and British government agencies were inserted malware to mine crypto-coins

According to TheRegister, thousands of websites, including U.S. and British government agencies, were infected with a set of codes on Sunday and for hours on Sunday, causing computers visiting infected Web sites to secretly tap into digital cryptocurrencies. TheRegister said more than 4,200 sites were infected with the malware, a malicious version of the Browsealoud tool developed by Texthelp, a UK software company originally designed to read web content for visually-impaired people.

In recent days, cyber-attacks that exploit malware to infect computers and make them digital diggers hackers have become increasingly rampant. This pattern of attacks has also gained in popularity in recent months as the volume of Bitcoin and other digitally encrypted currencies soars.

TheRegister report that computers accessing infected Web sites will be forced to run software that specifically excludes “Monero” to gain the benefit of hackers behind the scenes.

Neither the United States nor British law enforcement agencies nor Texthelp spokesman commented.

Texthelp previously told The Register that “We are addressing this immediately. Our Browsealoud service has been temporarily disabled whilst our engineering team investigates.”

Source: theregister