February 19th 2015
The official website of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has been hacked and as a result has been posing a risk to users of downloading viruses. It is not known how many users have been affected, but it is understood that the issue has now been resolved.
It is not clear whether jamieoliver.com – which attracts an average of 10 million visitors every month – was hacked via a compromised plugin used on the site or through stolen login details. Visitors were shown another website embedded directly into the authentic one, which downloaded malware on to their computers via vulnerabilities in software, namely Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and Java. The malware could be used to take over the computer to steal data, send spam and launch further attacks as part of a botnet.
A spokesperson for the Jamie Oliver group told The Guardian: “The team at jamieoliver.com found a low level malware problem and dealt with it quickly. The site is now safe to use. We have had only a handful of comments from users over the last couple of days, and no-one has reported any serious issues. The team is confident that no data has been compromised in this incident but if anyone is worried, do please use the contact form on the site.”
He continued: “We apologise to anyone who was at all worried after going on the site.”
