“Cheeky chappie” celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has had the smile wiped from his face after becoming the latest victim of a hack attack, after his eponymous site – which has over 10 million visits a month – started serving up malicious code.
A spokesman said the team behind the JamieOliver.com site were confident no personal data had been compromised in the infection, which now appears to have been cleared.
Online security firm Malwarebytes revealed that the issue was not the result of a malicious ad but a well hidden malicious ‘injection’ in the site itself. In a blog post, the firm said: “While routinely checking the latest exploits and sites hacked, we came across a strange infection pattern that seemed to start from jamieoliver.com.”
The company concluded that criminals must have hacked the popular site, which is ranked 515th in the UK, to place the malicious coding there, or exploited the existing code, which was designed to direct users to a compromised WordPress page.
The infection had the potential to take over users’ computers.
A spokesman for the Naked Chef star told the BBC: “The 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 apologise to anyone who was at all worried after going on the site.”
Naked Chef left exposed as hack serves up malware for starters http://t.co/g5Pma24PI7 #digitalmarketing #directmarketing #hacking #data