Jamie Oliver may have shared more than cooking tips with his fans recently, as his eponymous website has been recently spreading malware to unsuspecting users.
The celebrity chef’s website, which reportedly gets around ten million monthly users, has been serving users an exploit kit, which then downloaded the Dorkbot trojan.
The attack tried to exploit three different vulnerabilities found in Flash, Silverlight and Java. The first two have already been patched in Windows so make sure you keep your machine up to date and Java free.
Interestingly enough, the code filtered repeat visitors and those using VPNs so it seems to be a somewhat targeted attack. The Trojan can fool users into downloading a seemingly legit software update for Flash and Microsoft Security Essentials, which further wreck their machines.
The problem stemmed from a malicious javascript hosted on Jamie Oliver’s site and it’s not clear whether the code came via an infected 3rd party plug-in or if an administrative account has been compromised.
The good news is that the site has already been scrubbed clean by its administrators, so it’s once again safe for you to check on recipes. The bad news is that many people may have unwittingly infected their machines.
Source: Malwarebytes | Image via JamieOliver.com