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Malvertising Campaign Hits MSN, NY Times, BBC, AOL

Posted by msmash on from the news-outlets-offering-ransomware dept.

An anonymous reader quotes an article on Help Net Security: In the last couple of days, visitors of a number of highly popular media outlets including the NY Times, the BBC, and Newsweek have been targeted with malicious adverts that attempted to install malware (mostly ransomware, but also various Trojans) on their systems. The websites themselves weren't compromised as the problem was with the ad networks these sites use -- Google, AppNexus, AOL, Rubicon. The ad networks were tricked into serving malicious ads to the visitors.

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Re:BBC? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Adverts are shown to users visiting from non-UK IP addresses on all participating BBC websites.

  2. So, Forbes, Wired, et all by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Interesting

    wanna tell me again why it's wrong of me to run an ad-blocker? Try to use bigger words this time, cuz when you use the smaller ones I understand 100% what you're telling me and my Deja-Moo detector goes off.

    Deja-Moo - that feeling you've heard this bull before.

  3. Adblocker = Malware blocker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Adblocker & related tools should change their marketing from 'helping you to block ads' to 'helping you avoid Malware/trojans etc.'...e.g. they should advertise & promote themselves as a 'security tool'...everything out of their mouths, on their website etc should be focused on that use case. Any time some politician opens their mouth about how adblockers are 'stealing' or 'ruining' some business the makers of adblocking tools should retort with statements about 'helping users security' etc.