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Forbes Asks Readers To Disable Adblock, Serves Up Malvertising (engadget.com)
Deathlizard writes with a report at Engadget that when this year's "Forbes 30 Under 30" list came out , "it featured a prominent security researcher. Other researchers were pleased to see one of their own getting positive attention, and visited the site in droves to view the list. On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information."
Seriously, this is why we run ad blockers, and why I stopped reading Forbes. They need revenue, and I don't trust them to vet their advertisements, so I get my news elsewhere.
Which is sad, because I like a lot of their articles.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
What's a redear?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
you can be sued for telling other how to bypass the ad block block.
I wonder, can Forbes be sued for the damage that they have facilitated?
If users can demonstrate that infection came from them?
is convinced the ads just got too annoying, but in my experience there's no amount of annoying in ads that makes Joe or Jane average run screaming from them. I'm guessing it's relatives sick of cleaning malware. I run some ads on my site to pay for bandwidth and what have you and I've stuck with plain Google ads even though other folks might pay more because I can't be bothered dealing with serving up malware to my users. Both AVGN & Penny-Arcade have seen their sites taken down by Malvertisements and now even Forbes?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It could be argued, that the "No, really, let us show you the ads, because it pays for the content" mechanism is a payment mechanism to view protected content. By circumventing that to get unpaid access to the content, you are engaging in circumvention of a rights management system, and thus fall victim.
That's the thing with DRM-- it can be extremely feeble-- it still counts when considering the DMCA.
It could be argued that reading the article without "paying" for it (with your advert exposure) is piracy, and that to prevent you from doing this, the anti-blocker script was introduced.
Still a load of bullshit-- The need to circumvent protections that are onerous and not in the public good (or that prevent authorized special exception use, such as via a library) is very important but given short shrift as far as the DMCA is concerned.
Now stop linking to Forbes, slashdot. Archive.is if you need to. That website has been a steaming pile of shit since they started demanding what you think and see, of course they think nothing of demanding what your computer processes and does. They are tyrants, STOP LINKING FORBES
I went ahead and went to the Forbes site (which it says I'm "still" using an adblocker, in the same sense that I'm "still" a carbon based life form), and then I went and grabbed one of the scripts that they serve on the main page in lieu of fucking content.
Here's a link: I originally put a TINY amount of it here, but it was SO shitty than even after cutting it down it would just ruin you.
view-source:http://i.forbesimg.com/welcomead/scripts/12662fd2.vendor.js
Just go read that script. It might make you cry.
blah blah blah just megabytes of this shitscript to push through an article that maxes out at a kilobyte. It's fucking ludicrous.
And that's without all the ads (which are meant to own your head, and of course maliciously own your computer, and DO YOU THINK THEY ARE LIABLE FOR SERVING ADS THAT TURN YOUR MACHINE INTO A RUSSIAN SERVER?)
Stop. Linking. Forbes.
It's a pile of shit website. If you must, EACH link should go through archive/is or some other service to neuter the malware and bullshit. Stop enabling these fucks. If you need to serve megabytes of malware and bullshit just to put text on the screen, drink bleach kthx
Fuck Forbes, they supported SCO back in the mid-00s and portrayed Linux users and supporters as a bunch of communists. Forbes gets filtered by my mental adblock way before it gets loaded by my browser.
The most ridiculous ones are showing up on youtube. I have twice seen non-skippable ads show before videos tha are movie previews. As in, have to watch the ads before you can see the ads.
Then encrypt the article with a key derived from the hash of the ad.
My experience is that most ads are abusive in some way. I use these add-ons in Firefox: uBlock Origin ad blocking, NoScript, and Ghostery.
It amazes me that, when I go to the Ally Bank web site to see my accounts summary at the following URL, Ghostery says "Ghostery found 8 trackers":
https://securebanking.ally.com/#/accounts/summary
The Ally Bank URL contains the words "secure banking"!
Here are the trackers:
Advertising.com
Google DoubleClick Floodlight
Google DoubleClick Spotlight
Google Dynamic Remarketing
MediaMath Advertising
Omniture (Adobe Analytics)
Qualtrics
RUN (https://match.rundsp.com/)
There is nothing "secure" about notifying other companies that I am looking at a summary of my bank accounts!
Funny anecdote:
One site I frequent now and then shows short ads before the clips (with a timer how long the ad takes). So I usually open the tab, look how long it takes, then go on to another tab to do something else in the meantime. Works great. Only ONE time I got back to the page, see the last few seconds of the add, think "this looks interesting, what was that?" Of course they not only restricted fast forward during the ad, they also restricted rewind. So they themselves prevented me from watching the ad. Well. Serves them right. ;-)
It could also be argued, much more concisely in fact, that the advertisers are guilty of violating the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act, one count accessing a computer system without authorization, multiple counts accessing computer networks without authorization, plus the multiple counts of fraud and counterfeiting their malware performs on their behalf.
I'm OK with a DMCA violation that is a $150,000 fine (max penalty) so long as these people get their 60 years in prison (max sentence) as well.
By that silly law it's even illegal to keep the malware from infecting you.
That law is seriously broken. It's like making it illegal to keep a burglar from entering your house.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They are of course reliant on Google page rank so the Googlebot gets special treatment.
Don't you by very nature of the HTTP protocol need to ASK for this content? I know this is splitting hairs but I can't imagine that your reasoning would fly.
That's the entire point.
I asked for an image. Not executable code, not an image with executable code, but an image.
(Note I made no complaint about getting that image I asked for)
Say you ask me to send you money. Are you arguing you have no right to complain about the anthrax in the envelope so long as I actually did include money along with it too?