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Malware Installed by LiveJournal Ad
Jamesday writes "LiveJournal recently introduced an ad-supported level. Over the last few days an advertiser used an ad to install the ErrorSafe malware that tried to trick people into believing they had a fault on the computer that needs them to purchase a fix. The ad used a server-side setting and targetted only those outside the US, to prevent LiveJournal's own checks from noticing it. LiveJournal has apologized for the ad and slow response." Even our readers have had to endure more than one browser-crashing ad campaign from time to time. Thanks for sticking around.
I use an ad-supported LJ account, and the mentioned advertisement was made in flash. I had to deal with it a couple of days ago. Hoo-ray for security holes. Can't we just sue the ad company for unauthorized usage of our computer's resources?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
What part of "The ad used a server-side setting and targetted only those outside the US, to prevent LiveJournal's own checks from noticing it. LiveJournal has apologized for the ad and slow response." did you not read?
I, for one, do not welcome our new malware-installing overlords!
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
... but they and the advertisers are the ones driving people to them.
No seriously, is it any wonder people turn to ad-blockers? Try reading an informative bit of text when there's a Flash advertisement of box jumping around and flashing like a student at Mardi Gras. I don't care if you are trying to tell me I'm your millionth visitor. You misspelled congratulations! The box makes me wish I had no peripheral vision! FOAD.
Now I know publishers want to make a buck (I have a few websites [sans-advertising] myself), but if the advertisers are going to use annoying/underhand methods, people will take steps to protect themselves. A lot of these companies would do well to look at the sort of program Google offers: inoffensive, targeted, text ads.
In short: make your advertising better -- advertisers AND publishers -- or lose that which you supposedly value. Eyeballs.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
I once played this web based role playing game a while ago. It was just a so-so game, but one exceptional thing I did notice was that while playing from a Mac I would get randomly named .exe files downloaded to my desktop. Turns out that ads on this game site were just full of malware. Visiting from a Windows computer, I was getting prompted to install crap. So I went to report it on their forums and find out what was being done about it. They didn't care! The site maintainers claimed there was nothing they could do about it. It was their ad provider's fault. All they could say was "you should be running malware protections.." Needless to say, I was outraged by this irresponsibility. I told them off and never visited their god forsaken site again.
How can you NOT take responsibility for malware spread through your own site? I understand that people contract out ads, but geez, come on. No need to draw from the bottom of the barrel.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Heh, sometimes they do - but you'd be amazed at what goes on in the online advertising world.
One advertising company I used to work for once had a request to configure an ad campaign to run each advert for 30seconds then switch the advert the user was viewing to a different one.
Only later did we discover it was to bypass a websites manual safety check, where they check each advert complies with their rules by watching it for 20 seconds.
They did. The ad contains code that skips the malware install if it's running in the US, as for example when it's being screened.
A better question is why displaying an ad can install software on your computer. The LiveJournal posts say it was a Flash ad, so until we get real information it's logical to guess that it exploits one of the vulnerabilities in the Shockwave player.
Do people still get them? I thought everyone had adblock installed.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
While it was good of them to pull the ad from the rotation immediately, they failed in several other ways:
(1) they failed to post a notice or provide links for the removal of the malware. At best in the blog there are references that such removal instructions exist, peppered with a warning that some of them are actually malware themselves. They should have made the fix EASY and FOOLPROOF to obtain after getting their readers infected. It's been how long since they got their subscribers infected and they have done nothing more than to stop more of them from getting infected. They helped to break the computers, they should play an active roll in fixing them.
(2) the impression I got from their posts in their blog was that "oops sorry not our fault, not our advertiser's fault, it's one of the ad companies that subscribed to our advertiser". This is a cop-out. When you provide a service like they do, your advertisement is a bundle that comes with your service, and as such you are responsible for its content. I don't care if it's a 3rd party. You take on the responsibility for the content you deliver, regardless of how you get it. You can have legal arrangements with your content providers that provide YOU with a legal remedy, but the grief passes through you. You get sued, and then you sue the ones upsteam that caused you to get sued. You do not "pass the buck" and point a finger up the chain three levels and say not my problem good luck getting anything out of them, because the consumer has no legal recourse against those people. You as the content provider do have a legal recourse against your advertiser, and they have recourse against their affiliate who caused the problem in the first place. This pass the buck mentality is cheap and lazy, and they should be ashamed for trying to pull it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
TFA had to do with LiveJournal, not MySpace...
Xserv
"I love lamp."
But I kept getting problems with my computer while reading the ad filled apology page.
Apparently, I needed to download some software because my computer was out of date. Thank goodness I visited LiveJournal today, which told me to update with their new UrP0wnd.exe update.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Don't confuse communism the theory with the dictatorships the claim to be communist. Communism as a theory disclaims most if not all personal property rights, but it has nothing to do with Murder and Censorship, any more than Capitalism has to do with monitoring bank records and tapping phone calls.
Which doesn't mean I'm pro-communism. The problem with communism is motivation, without the acquisition of something as a goal, what motivation do people have? Who assigns people tasks? Who says the community is best served by Jon running the cash register and Joe cleaning septic tanks? Its a system that sounds great in theory but works like crap in practice
At the same time, there's nothing terribly moral about capitalism either. In an ideal capialist society, The sick, old and infirm are left to die. The people in a capitalistic society may be moral and charitable, setting up orphanages to help stranded children, feeding and housing grandma even when she ran out of savings, but thats not Capitalism.
"This just in: Capitalism and Morals do not necessarily go hand in hand."
Caveat Emptor
Doesn't matter if its politics, economics, religion, software, hardware, or even information.
The fact that there are people running businesses with questionable ethics in no way reflects on the morality of the underlying economic philosophy. History easily shows that people who have questionable morals have no difficulty working within the structure of any social philosophy which gains any significant following whether it be economic, religious, or governmental in nature.
So when someone comes around selling their alternative economic philosophy based on the idea that the current system inherently lacks morality, caveat emptor.
burnin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism Particularly: "communism as a political goal generally is a conjectured form of future social organization which has never been implemented" IOW, don't confuse the states that purport to be communist with communism. The USSR, China, Cuba, et al are not communist states. They are totalitarian dictatorships claiming to be communist (or that we have dubbed communist regardless of what they claimed to be). A pure communism is moral and not capitalist since there is no self-interest (selfishness) nor any need for it. There's no need to rip anyone off or take advantage of anyone. There is no need for contracts that bind the consumer to the advantage of the vendor. The truth is that communism is probably not achievable by humans, who would want to clean toilets even if you did have the same lifestyle as the head of state. Life on Star Trek starships is communist. Until matter replicators that will freely feed anyone that wants to eat are broadly available on earth communism is impossible but it is moral in ways that capitalism isn't.
My simple fix for the security problems associated with Flash is to not install flash. Let's face it, 99.9% of flash is just obnoxious ads anyway
Even better, just disconnect your computer from the internet. Who needs internet? Let's face it, 99.9% of internet is just obnoxious anyway.
Exactly, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is precisely because of self interest that others are willing to offer us their goods and services. One of my favorite quotes puts it much better than I can: