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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."

15 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 dean.collins · · Score: 5, Informative

      As a content provider (I'm the founder of http://www.livebaseballchat.com/ stuff like this annoys the hell out of me.

      I mean we go to all the effort to secure passwords, code tc - then our users are infected with ads they view....

      We were sourcing our banner ads from Pubmatic but after a two 'problem ads' about 3 weeks I've cut it back to Google + banners we sell internall direct to end companies.

      I dont have any answers but if you have a problem with a website be sure to let the content owners know - they might not even realise they have a problem.

      Cheers,
      Dean Collins
      http://www.livebaseballchat.com/

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

      People actually click on ads?

  2. what ads? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    /strokes adblock

    1. 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.
    2. Re:what ads? by John+Hasler · · Score: 4, Funny

      No hope for the Web, I guess. Even if I didn't block the ads I'd never click them, and even if I clicked them I'd never buy the products. The Web is going to collapse and it's all my fault. Sob.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    3. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. So lucky me... by koolfy · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...having that "Disable Advertising" checkbox from Slashdot :)

    "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising. "
    Thank you for preventing my Gentoo Linux system for being infec...

    Oh, wait...

    --
    Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
  5. The Next Ad You Click May Be a Virus by PaganRitual · · Score: 5, Funny

    Or it may win you ... A NEW CAR.

    Are you prepared to take that risk?

    Hmm ... that's not appearing like it should. It's spelt B-L-I-N-K, right?

  6. It's worse than that by Erik+Fish · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not clicking on banner ads isn't enough. For years I've been fine with letting any non-Flash banner ad through, but I a few months ago I finally installed Adblock after finding one too many PDF exploits being loaded through banner ad display code.

    It works like this: You are minding your own business browsing some perfectly legitimate web site when suddenly you get a dialog box asking if you would like to execute the JavaScript in "this PDF document". There's no PDF in sight, no other windows, nothing else suspicious.

    Oh, but you only get this dialog if you have JavaScript disabled in Acrobat (most people don't).

  7. We allowed them in by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You know, back in the good ol' days of yore, when the internet was young and so were we, we created a beautiful garden. We, the geeks, we came together and we built. We created flowerbeds and hacked away the weed so people could find a path through the wilderness, we invited other geeks to join us in our creation so they would maybe build something even greater on top of ours. We looked at it and saw it was stunning and beautiful, and we looked outside for the "others", the "mundanes", the average guy and we thought, wouldn't it be a great idea if they, too, could see how beautiful and magical it all is? Imagine, when we, a handful of geeks, can create such wonders, what miracles are waiting for us to see if we just let others join in the creation?

    Sure, they were no gardeners, so we paved a few ways through our wonderland, lest they got their feet dirty on the muddy paths we used to walk on. And the people came. They came in, and they looked. Few wanted to create, actually, most just enjoyed the view (hey, how many gardening exhibits do you know where you can see exotic plants without having to pay admission?), some tried to plant but soon got fed up when they noticed they'd have to know a bit about gardening.

    And of course, in came also the ones that find pleasure in destruction, who wanted nothing but to destroy the creations. We had to fence them in, we had to hire guards for our creations so they wouldn't get destroyed. Often enough, those guards were not good enough and quite a few beauties are no more.

    Personally, I wonder if it was a good idea to unlock those doors and pave some ways.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.