Websites’ servers hacked to host child abuse images

Dozens of businesses have been hacked and their computer servers used to host images of child sexual abuse, the Internet Watch Foundation has said.

The charity said legal pornographic sites had also been attacked to redirect users to the illegal material.

The offending material was sometimes accompanied by malware, it said.

The IWF told BBC Radio 5 live it had received 227 reports about the trend over the past six weeks. Some complaints involved the same examples.

Hijacked links

Cambridge-based IWF described the images as showing “the worst of the worst” sexual abuse.

They included images of newborn babies and the rape and violent sexual abuse of very young children, it said.

The charity gave the example of one case in which a furniture business had had the servers it used breached.

It said the attackers had created an “orphan folder” on the computers and then uploaded hundreds of offending images to it – effectively creating a new section on the retailer’s website which was not linked to any of its other pages.

The charity said the hackers then hijacked links on “adult” sites so that if a visitor clicked on one of the affected pornographic images or videos they would be directed to the offending material.

 

BBC has the full article

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