What Happened
Websites for some of the world’s most prestigious universities are serving explicit porn and malicious content after scammers exploited the shoddy record-keeping of the site administrators, a researcher found recently.
Table of Contents
Why It Matters
The sites included berkeley.edu, columbia.edu, and washu.edu, the official domains for the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and Washington University in St.
Key Details
- Subdomains such as hXXps://causal.stat.berkeley.edu/ymy/video/xxx-porn-girl-and-boy-ej5210.html, hXXps://conversion-dev.svc.cul.columbia[.]edu/brazzers-gym-porn, and hXXps://provost.washu.edu/app/uploads/formidable/6/dmkcsex-10.pdf.
- All deliver explicit pornography and, in at least one case, a scam site falsely claiming a visitor’s computer is infected and advising the visitor to pay a fee for the non-existent malware to be removed.
- In all, researcher Alex Shakhov said, hundreds of subdomains for at least 34 universities are being abused.
- Search results returned by Google list thousands of hijacked pages.
Background Context
Websites for some of the world’s most prestigious universities are serving explicit porn and malicious content after scammers exploited the shoddy record-keeping of the site administrators, a researcher found recently. The sites included berkeley.edu, columbia.edu, and washu.edu, the official domains for the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Subdomains such as hXXps://causal.stat.berkeley.edu/ymy/video/xxx-porn-girl-and-boy-ej5210.html, hXXps://conversion-dev.svc.cul.columbia[.]edu/brazzers-gym-porn, and hXXps://provost.washu.edu/app/uploads/formidable/6/dmkcsex-10.pdf. All deliver explicit pornography and, in at least one case,
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Source: Ars Technica – All content – Original Link
Source: Ars Technica – All content
