A Spotify Ad Slipped Malware Onto PCs and Macs (techhive.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes TechHive: Spotify's ads crossed from nuisance over to outright nasty this week, after the music service's advertising started serving up malware to users on Wednesday. The malware was able to automatically launch browser tabs on Windows and Mac PCs, according to complaints that surfaced online...the ads directed users' browsers to other malware-containing sites in the hopes that someone would be duped into downloading more malicious software.
It didn't last long -- Spotify quickly posted that they'd identified "the source of the problem." And they're not the only company dealing with hidden malware in ads, since the same thing has happened to both Google and Yahoo.

Comments

Re:Enough of the IAB, ad networks and bad websites

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on the Internet/Web for a long time. When Cantor and Siegel first spammed USENET, it had already been 15 years for me. I had been involved in the early protocol meetings concerning TCP/IP, (I brought donuts...), the Usenet "Great Renaming", and the creation of some of the first rec.(group.group) Newsgroups, some of which weren't meant to be taken seriously... (Dammit, the actual CFV for rec.humor.objectivism was supposed to be a joke in itself, and yet it roused so many humorless Objections...)

"The IAB [wikipedia.org] and ad networks [wikipedia.org] are complicit in allowing this situation to persist..."
They aren't just complicit, they are the very reason that this situation persists. Every time some Sanctimonious Bastard in Advertising or Marketing opens his mouth to address just about anything related to Advertising and the Internet, MY Internet, I want to wring their bloody neck until their eyes pop out of their sockets and green goo gushes from their ears.
Enough of this mild talk...

It's time to take blocking Advertising to the next level. It is no longer enough to just block it on our end. It has to be blocked at the Server level. There are several means of doing this, Dungeons Dragons or Snakes for instance, but these means shouldn't be addressed at the most egregious of offenders; no, the Sanctimonious Bastards are first in line. Just imagine what if... what if the IAB was held... I don't know of any other way of putting this... what if the IAB was held Ransom? All that they have to do is reign in the Worst of their Lot, or the Best will be obliterated. It's called their Taking Responsibility. And after all, _we_ killed Adobe Flash because of Abuse. This has happened before; there is no reason to stop now.

Sir, (Nobody quite knows for sure who actually Knighted him, or why...), John Hawkwood and his Knights in White, the White Company, tore through Europe in the 14th Century, when they weren't otherwise engaging in the 100 Years War or the Crusades. At times, they brought Commerce to a literal crawl, because raising one's head meant that it might be chopped right off, before the Goods were requisitioned. And at times, they could be quite civilized- Pay a Ransom, or Else. Ah, the days and origins of the White Knights...

I'm too old for all this nonsense of course; I might end up marooned in some distant land just like a distant Ancestor, Enguerrand VII, Sire de Coucy, dying from a Virus, (Or possibly the Plague.), while Hawkwood retired to fame and fortune, the ultimate Bribe, in what eventually became Italy.

No, this is a task for the Younger Folk, Errant Knights all, eager for yet another Crusade. (And this isn't meant to be taken seriously either. Or is it?)

And these idiots wonder why

[Chas]

Seriously, the advertising industry wonders why we hate ads and ad delivery platforms so much.

Because of shit like this.