Jamie Oliver's website has been hacked
Researchers at Websense Security Lab report "malicious activity" on jamieoliver.com, which was "compromised" by malware on Wednesday. Oliver's website gets more than 10 million visits per month, according to the online security specialists, and attracts fans all over the world. It's ranked at 519 in the most popular UK sites.
It's likely that thousands would have visited Oliver's website yesterday, all eager to find inspiration for tasty ideas for Shrove Tuesday. But alongside recipes for dishes such as "coconut pancakes with pomegranate jewels" and features about why we should all eat less meat, Oliver has inadvertently served up some malicious code. The Register explains that it could affect users' machines. It's not clear how long jamieoliver.com was hit, though.
The attack was first found by a blog called malwarebytes. The team there describes the hack as a "malicious injection." It was hidden in JavaScript and the blog notes that the offending code was not easy to spot immediately. But the security blog uncovered a link to something called an "exploit kit," which could potentially cause harm to users' computers.
Malwarebytes senior researcher Jérôme Segura says the hack was a "carefully and well hidden" attack. He advises that "The web masters will need to look for additional evidence of infection, rather than simply restore or delete the offending script."
Here's the scary warning message found when perusing Oliver's website:
