A security consultant based in the UK has discovered cryptocurrency mining scripts embedded on thousands of websites, including many belonging to the UK, US and Australian governments.

Security expert Scott Helme has a blog post about how one can avoid falling victim to this kind of attack.

The Queensland Government legislation website appears to be among the Australian sites affected. Other Ausralian sites hit by this attack are the Casey council in Victoria and Queensland's Urban Utilities site.

Mr Helme said that the scripts appeared to have been placed using a third-party compromise and pointed to the script that had been used to effect the compromise.

Should governments be doing more to protect their data from hackers?