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Banner Ad on Myspace Serves Adware to 1 Million
An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog reports that a banner ad running on MySpace.com and other Web sites used a Windows security flaw to push adware and spyware out to more than one million computer users this week. The attack leveraged the Windows Metafile (WMF) exploit to install programs in the PurityScan/ClickSpring family of adware, which bombards the user with pop-up ads and tracks their Web usage."
This way we don't even have to read the article if we want to! We can just comment about the comments of the article. =D
In your case, the problem wasn't with the Dilbert website, and in the parent article, it wasn't a problem with myspace, either.
The problem is with the ad-serving companies that these websites use. Either they're less-than-trustworthy, and are directly responsible for the exploits being used, or they sub-contract out, and don't care enough to keep an eye on their "partners". Usually, notifying the webmaster of the offending site is enough to get them to have a "talk" with their advertisers to resolve the situation.
Of course, you probably already know this, but it bears repeating as it's something that can be missed by people not familar with the subject.
Please, won't someone think of the n00bs?
My sig can beat up your sig.
Who can take a company/site serious when they are (through their ads) trying to outright scam their customers?
This works for the same reason that spam works - it's cheap to do, and only a few stupid people need to click on the ads for them to be making money again.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
I have to disagree with both of you. People block ads not because of risk, not because they take up too much bandwidth and processor power, but because they take up too much attention. People want to pay attention to the real content, not wade through fake distracting crap that wants to sell them something.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha