Media: Romanian Education Ministry’s website mines cryptocurrency

The website of the Romanian Ministry of Education, edu.ro, uses the resources of the computers from which it is being accessed to mine cryptocurrency, local Hotnews.ro reported. The local publication said that both the Avira antivirus and AdGuard warned about the fact the edu.ro is mining cryptocurrency. It also reported that specialists from the Romanian National Computer Security Incident Response Team (CERT-RO) said they are talking with ministry representatives about this situation. The traffic on the Ministry of Education’s website is quite high in this period, as important national exams such as the Baccalaureate are getting closer. CERT-RO warned earlier this year that about 150 Romanian domains (.ro) run the CoinHive script for mining the Monero cryptocurrency using their visitors’ computers. These websites do not warn their users about the existence of this script which overloads the processor and blocks the device from where the website is accessed. A Deliotte senior expert said in late-May that cryptocurrency mining servers installed in Romania have a major impact on increasing the domestic energy consumption. Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com