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

How difficult can it be

[Anonymous Coward]

to have as a policy and requirement, that adverts only come as still images, or movie sequences? Why the f*ck would you allow actual 3rd party code to run inside your own software, to display an advert?

Shashdot has had this as well.

[stfvon007]

I have had something similar happen a couple times on slashdot - an ad redirects the whole page to a scam "You won a free apple laptop" page that tries to trick you into downloading malware. (for those who say it was a virus on the PC not slashdot, one of these times was on a fresh install of linux) This is why I have adblocker software and why slashdot is NOT whitelisted anymore. (Hint to slashdot's owners, Adopt the policy of the first poster and I may whitelist you again)