At least four Australian Web sites are said to have been targeted by a cryptojacking racket that installs browser mining software Coinhive to mine the cryptocurrency Monero.

It was unclear last night if the charity outfit UNICEF Australia’s money raising deal that employs this system to allow it to use donors’ computers to mine for Monero is one of the affected sites.

Under the UNICEF deal, Australians who wish to help raise funds for thousands of Rohingya children in Bangladesh and Myanmar agree to allow UNICEF to use the power of their computers to “mine” for the cryptocurrency. “Mining is perfectly safe for your computer,” they were told by UNICEF.

The charity’s “Hope Page” Web site was still seeking new donors yesterday.

International security researcher Troy Mursch says he has recently detected the Coinhive code running on nearly 400 Web sites, most in the USA and hosted by Amazon.