Security researcher Zach Edwards has discovered that various US government and military websites have been hosting porn and Viagra ads, in the last year.
The researcher has traced the issue down to these .gov and .mil domains using a common software product provided by Laserfiche, a government contractor.
According to a security researcher, the reason a lot of government websites are hosting these spammy ads is a vulnerability in a piece of software used by an array of government agencies. The vulnerability allowed third parties to push files to these sites without the site owners’ permission.
“This vulnerability created phishing lures on .gov and .mil domains that would push visitors into malicious redirects, and potentially target these victims with other exploits,” Zach Edwards, the security researcher, told Motherboard in an online chat.
He shared a video demonstrating the vulnerability in action and says he’s seen this behavior “on probably 50 different government subdomains.”
Laserfiche has now released a security advisory for the vulnerability, along with instructions on how to clean up your website from spam content.
