aka what hackers sometimes want from your web site/app
Cryptocurrency mining is a computationally intense process that puts your web server’s computing power to work on behalf of the attacker. Our security researchers have uncovered evidence of hacks yielding almost $100,000 in just a few days.
Hosting phishing pages is a popular way to leverage a hacked website. A phishing page is one that attempts to fool you into sharing sensitive information, like your password, credit card number or social security number.
An example of a phishing page is a fake login page that gives you the impression you are on an online banking login screen. You enter your credentials and the attacker logs them and can now sign into your real online banking account and steal data. Because your site has a clean reputation, when attackers host phishing pages on your site, services like Google Safe Browsing that would normally warn users about suspicious websites won’t know to alert visitors to the danger of the phishing page. Well, until the phishing pages are reported. Then, you may end up on a blacklist.
Another popular approach is hosting spam pages and injecting spammy links. Your site is legitimate, so search engines like Google assume that your content, including outbound links, is also legitimate. Attackers love to plant SEO spam in the form of pages and links on your site, boosting SEO rankings for their malicious businesses. It’s important to remember that while your site alone isn’t capable of boosting an attacker’s SEO results, thousands of compromised sites can really move the needle.
Source: WordFence