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The Next Ad You Click May Be a Virus

Posted by kdawson on from the simple-solution-suggests-itself dept.

Jay notes a Wall Street Journal report about ad networks unintentionally selling empty space to malware loaders (the link is to a syndicating site that doesn't require a subscription to view). The submitter comments: "The labeling of the fake ad sellers as hackers is pretty bogus; there's no hacking involved. Simply sign up for one of these networks, create your fake site, put up another company's creative, and you're good to go." The incidents being reported go back a few months, but the pattern of this criminal activity seems to be coming clear only recently."EWeek.com, a technology news site owned by Ziff Davis Enterprise, in February displayed an ad on its homepage masquerading as a promotion for LaCoste, the shirt maker. The retailer hadn't placed the ad — a hacker had, to direct users to a Web site where harmful programs would be downloaded to their computers, says Stephen Wellman, director of community and content for Ziff Davis."

8 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Aren't they all? by Bob_Who · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean really, its all just semantics (and semiotics) and we're all infected...cookie anyone?

    1. Re:Aren't they all? by dziban303 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People actually click on ads?

  2. When will this end? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While the internet is a wonderful thing; I can't help but wonder where did all of the douchebags come from. Every liar, cheat, grifter is taking their shot at fucking up the sandbox we all play in. Its all fun and games when windows users get hosed, but after awhile even that gets old. I am just a tired old man. It makes me sad that my poor view of humanity gets reinforced every time I turn around.

    1. Re:When will this end? by Fastolfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Botnets and financial data have value, so it makes sense that there's profit to be had in finding ways to infect new machines. These are the same douchebags that fill up my gmail Spam folder. If there's profit to be had, and nearly zero chance you'll be caught, people will do pretty much anything. It's human nature. All you can do is improve the sandbox so that people can't (profitably) abuse it, and most of the douchebags will leave.

    2. Re:When will this end? by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I feel your pain. The unfolding truth seems to be that they were always there and humanity really sucks for the most part. The internet just makes it easier to tally the grim statistics.

    3. Re:When will this end? by eriks · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Humanity is actually mostly nice, really. It's just that with 7 billion people, even if only .01% are complete assholes, that's almost a million people, and you just know that ALL of those people are on the internet messing with us, and they seem like a billion people thanks to the amplification power of technology.

  3. Re:what ads? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually it is the webmasters and advertisers fault that so many of us use ABP and Noscript. Pull up a chair young'un and let me explain.

    Back in the old days (cue my oldest saying "when folks had 8-tracks and dinosaurs ruled the earth") ads were just a few lines of pretty text or a picture, or hell if you wanted to be fancy a little .gif. But we had us a problem. you see, all these video formats were competing, and most really REALLY sucked. Anybody who went through the heyday of Real player on Windows knows of which i speak, so somebody came up with flash, which worked okay.

    But then the evil advertising execs saw the flash video and said "You know what? I bet we can use this to irritate the living hell out of folks. Let's see them ignore our fricking ads now baby!" and thus was born the Bonzi Buddy of web evil, the "shoot the monkey and win a ---" ads. And they truly were irritating as all hell. but then the other ad execs saw this, and being the evil creatures of Satan that they are, said "we can top that!" and so ads became ever more annoying and evil. In fact I am surprised somebody hasn't put that damned frog in a looping flash ad with little text that says "buy coke"

    Hell for all I know, they may have. I and many other wouldn't know, because one day a great and noble man named Wlad came along and said "Damn, that's irritating as fuck!" and being the great man that he is, created the wonder that is ABP. And all was good. Now if you and any other web masters want to appeal to those of us blessed with the ABP to let your puny site poison our eyes, that is fine. but woe be unto you if you show us even ONE of those damned "shoot the monkey and win a ---" ads for we shall put you in the blacklist for all eternity. Amen.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  4. Re:what ads? by Pinckney · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you did see those full page flash ads, and you had no chance to block them, would you still visit the page? Or would it not be worth the annoyance and you'd just turn away in disgust? Using adblock and noscript keeps their impressions up and thus keeps the pagemasters from learning that annoying the living hell out of your visitors isn't how you attract people.

    People don't care. I find internet ads to be just as annoying as television ads, but most people keep using both without blocking them. Most of the time, when I use someone else's computer, they have no ad-blocking software at all. It's not just lack of knowledge. I just asked my sister if she wanted to block online ads. She said "It's fine. I don't want to mess with it. I really don't care at all." Ads are everywhere in our culture, and most people don't give a damn.