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Banner Ad on Myspace Serves Adware to 1 Million

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the have-some-pop-ups dept.

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."

3 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Prosecute virus creating companies. by Facekhan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And they wonder why consumers want to block all ads. Its because of illegal virus ads like this. If they prosecuted spyware companies the way they do with other virus creators we would not have as much of a problem with people setting up shop as if this is a legitimate business and then hijacking people's computers for profit and waiting for enough complaints to pile up that maybe the state attempts an enforcement action which at worst closes the company and more likely a few small fines and promises to behave in the future. Either way the owners of these companies never serve a day in prison for releasing their viruses.

  2. This comes right after a Flash hack by ben+there... · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Tom (the site's...er, spokesperson) left this message in everyone's Inbox on the 17th:

    Latest Update: 05:15PM PST, Monday, July 17th.
    hey folks - we are moving myspace music players and video players to flash 9.0. flash 9 has security fixes so that people can't mess with you on myspace. if your 'about me' got screwed up this weekend, you could have been safe if you had flash 9 installed. here's an easy way to install it, go watch this dashboard video i posted last week. if you don't like dashboard, just watch any video in our video section, and you'll be prompted to install flash 9.

    His solution to the hack that destroys a section of your profile is not that he will fix the site, but that you should install Flash 9.
  3. Re:Virus/adware-spreading ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had dilbert.com as my home-page for years, but recently gave up on it in disgust. 9 times out of 10 Firefox would block anything upto 3 popups, and then they started to carry an extremly obnoxious popup that even Firefox couldn't block. I figure anyone being that anti-social doesn't want me around, so I left. If I were Scott Adams I'd be outraged by United Medias total dimwitedness, but I guess his Clue departed many years ago.