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How Malvertising Abuses Real-Time Bidding On Ad Networks
msm1267 writes Dark corners of the Internet harbor trouble. They're supposed to. But what about when Yahoo, CNN.com, TMZ and other busy destination sites heave disaster upon visitors? That's the challenge posed by malvertising, the latest hacker Golden Goose used in cybercrime operations and even in some targeted attacks. Hackers are thriving in this arena because they have found an unwittingly complicit partner in the sundry ad networks to move malicious ads through legitimate processes. Adding gasoline to the raging fire is the abuse of real-time ad bidding, a revolution in the way online ads are sold. RTB enables better ad targeting for advertisers and less unsold inventory for publishers. Hackers can also hitch a ride with RTB and target malicious ads on any site they wish, much the way a legitimate advertiser would use the same system.
The second you take the human out of the loop on who approves something going into production, you open up a huge avenue of risk: that the automation will put something you don't want out on the Web.
Direct copy-and-paste from an article should be quoted, to make it clear that in fact msm1267 wrote nothing at all.
Sigh, OTOH, at least the "summary" is not a gross misrepresentation, like so many others.
Ahh... The joys of having anonymous advertisers, even on well-known sites: Not only some of the ads are of questionable legality, but some of them may actually hurt you. THIS is why AdBlock Edge is a security policy, not an adblocking policy. Don't give me the "freeloader" talk. Either host your own ads and be responsible for them, or partner with reliable ad agencies (and maybe I will unblock them).
Slashdotters discover cure for malware from infected ad servers from this simple tool
https://adblockplus.org/
Advertisers & Malware writters HATE THIS!
http://saveie6.com/
I'm sorry. Please explain to me again how I'm stealing food from "content creator"'s mouths by running addblock. And why I hate freedom for making Flash click to play.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Users getting malware infection from ads is a really big problem even when you never click on them.
Why not restrict all ads to GIFs (static or animated) and JPGs?
Reason number 48372534786 why it's better just to universally block advertisements on the internet.
Aren't most exploits removed by loading the image and then recompressing it? Why would you ever serve the raw binary for an image at least that was directly given to you by an advertiser? Isn't that just asking for an exploit?
I understand flash is much harder to deal with. Maybe the ad networks need some kind of template for allowed flash so they can take the flash file, take it apart, recompress all the images in and and then load it into their own template so that any exploits in it are probably removed.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Mr. Jackson: your editorial advice is clearly needed here at Slashdot. Article summaries have become a leading cause of frustration for those of us who can actually read and write English.
Make sites FULLY liable for problems caused by malware they serve up. Problem solved.
Absolutely NO ONE cares that some individual blogger makes a dollar from his blogging. Not the readers, not the corporations, not your ISP/host, not even the government, NO ONE. None of us gives a small rat's ass. But, yes, you CAN negotiate with some advertiser whom you deem to be reputable, and not suck at the Google teat, or whatever. Host your own ads, or I won't see them, it's really that simple. All the big ad servers are blocked on my machines.
Reliable ad agency? Yeah, I gotta agree, that's kinda funny. It may even qualify as a full fledged oxymoron.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
All of the RTB platforms put a great deal of effort into validating adverts before they run, and are *very* responsive to anythingn which gets passed those filters and checks.
No doubt these companies went through network, server and application security assessments and then completely ignored their 3rd party Ad provider that hosts their Ads on a hacked shared host.
This article is about 15 years late. Malware via adverts/trackers has been around since before the word "phishing" was coined. If the advertising industry gave any shits about fixing this, they'd have done it by now as it's a very simple problem to fix. But surprise surprise - they don't care, and neither do the sites complicit in selling their users to the advertisers!
The trouble is, how do you identify where the malware comes from? Sifting through the outrageous numbers of ads on so many of the random click-bait web pages full of kitten videos linked to on Facebook is hard enough. Trying to nail down exactly which ad gave you the infection would be pretty much impossible. So there's no way to really know who to sue.
The only solution is to approach the internet like you would approach a lady of the evening. Don as much protection as you can before you interact because there's no telling what dangers lurk in the dark places. Because if you come away with an infection, there's nothing you can do but treat it as an afterthought.
Simple, when sites are caught serving malware all those whose browser history shows they visited the site during the time in question should be assumed to have gotten any infections on their machine from the site in question, problem solved.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What would you define as "effective controls"? And for how many years is a well-known ad network going to be able to keep a spotless record? Which if any existing network qualifies?
Until ad networks can ensure that EVERY ad they run is 100% free of malware, I will continue to block their ads.
Since I have no actual desire to consume their content
Until you hit a site that has Adblockblock. I've noticed that a lot of sites are doing this nowadays for videos and even for text beyond the first couple paragraphs.
I have seen a few of those. Just highlight a relevant bit of text and search it on google. It's rare that a page will have exclusive information anymore.
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.