Jamie Oliver's website was affected by a malware issue, a spokesperson for the British celebrity chef has told the BBC.
SC Magazine explains that victims were redirected to a compromised WordPress website via a malicious iFrame injected into the celebrity chef's personal website. The Wordpress site would then redirect visitors to the landing page of the Fiesta Exploit kit - provided they were not using a VPN. The reasoning for this is said to be to avoid detection by security experts, who regularly use VPNs to cycle through different IP addresses.
The exploit kit would launch Flash, Silverlight and Java exploits, and included a Trojan which hijacks search results. As Graham Cluley told the BBC, "you may think you're googling but, in fact, you are being redirected against your will to search results that earn the attackers affiliate cash."
"In addition, you may find that you are tricked into installing bogus security updates on your computer or told to ring what is claimed to be technical support - although you would actually be speaking to scammers after your credit card details," he added.
Computer Weekly claims that Oliver's website sees an average of 10 million visitors a month, many of whom may have been exposed to the exploit, which is said to have been on the site since December.
A spokesperson for Mr Oliver said that the problem has since been fixed, and was "low level" - only 10 users had written to the site about the issue. He continued, "The Jamie Oliver website is regularly checked for vulnerabilities by both our in-house team and an independent third party, and they quickly deal with anything that is found."
"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. We apologize to anyone who was at all worried after going on the site."
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