Threat Management, Threat Management, Malware, Network Security

Make-A-Wish website compromised for cryptomining campaign

Not even the Make-A-Wish Foundation is off limits for some unscrupulous cybercriminals, as evidenced by a cryptojacking operation that compromised the charitable organization's international website.

Simon Kenin, security researcher at Trustwave, reported in a company blog post today that malicious actors injected a CoinImp browser-based cryptomining script that would harness the processing power of any computers whose browsers visited the domain worldwish.org.

The website may have been compromised via the Drupalgeddon 2 vulnerability, considering that the mining script used in the campaign was hosted by the domain drupalupdates.tk, which Kenin said is part of a larger campaign known to exploit Drupalgeddon 2.

"What's interesting about this particular campaign is that it uses different techniques to avoid static detections," Kenin wrote. "It starts with changing the domain name that hosts the JavaScript miner, which is itself obfuscated... The WebSocket proxy also uses different domains and IPs which make blacklist solutions obsolete."

According to the post, Trustwave reached out to Make-A-Wish to report the compromise and, despite no official response, the injected script was subsequently removed from the website.

Make-A-Wish's mission is to fulfill the wishes of children diagnosed with critical illnesses.

Bradley Barth

As director of multimedia content strategy at CyberRisk Alliance, Bradley Barth develops content for online conferences, webcasts, podcasts video/multimedia projects — often serving as moderator or host. For nearly six years, he wrote and reported for SC Media as deputy editor and, before that, senior reporter. He was previously a program executive with the tech-focused PR firm Voxus. Past journalistic experience includes stints as business editor at Executive Technology, a staff writer at New York Sportscene and a freelance journalist covering travel and entertainment. In his spare time, Bradley also writes screenplays.

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