Thousands of hacked websites are infecting visitors with malware

(credit: Wired UK/Shuttershock)

Thousands of hacked websites have become unwitting participants in an advanced scheme that uses fake update notifications to install banking malware and remote access trojans on visitors' computers, a computer researcher said Tuesday.

The campaign, which has been running for at least four months, is able to compromise websites running a variety of content management systems, including WordPress, Joomla, and SquareSpace. That's according to a blog post by Ji(C)rime Segura, lead malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes. The hackers, he wrote, cause the sites to display authentic-appearing messages to a narrowly targeted number of visitors that, depending on the browsers they're using, instruct them to install updates for Firefox, Chrome, or Flash.

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