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Banner ads spread viruses
Author: Phil CogarPublished: 16th November 2007
DoubleClick's DART program has surcome to virus laced Flash adverts.
It seems that some nice guy out there has figured out a way to inject a virus into flash-based banner ads and get them into DoubleClick's DART program. Once in rotation, it seems that the malware is either time or site triggered and then begins its assault on personal data on your PC.
You'll know instantly if you've come across one of these infected banners because of the following: first, your web browser will close down and then reopen with a redirect to an antivirus site. A dialog box will then pop up telling you that your computer is infected and that it is scanning your hard drive. Finally, the malware attempts to download software to your computer and then "scans" your hard drive another time.
The malicious ads have been found on major sites such as Canada.com, MLB.com, and Economist.com. You shouldn't need to worry too much about it though as DoubleClick has taken measures now to improve security. The company says that it has found and disabled a hundred ads so far.
"This is an industry-wide challenge. Unfortunately, there are bad actors who misrepresent themselves and purchase advertising as an avenue to distribute malware. This has the potential to affect all businesses and consumers in the online environment," says Sean Harvey, DoubleClick DART senior product manager.
It seems that no matter how safe you are on the web these days, you're eventually going to get hit with a virus or other malicious code.
Do you still not run an antivirus or have you finally decided to pick one up? Leave your suggestions for a great antivirus (free or not) over in the forums.
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Comments (36)
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Sam
I always felt that there was a threat of malware or something nasty coming from advertising. It wants you to buy something, but I just won't part with my cash if I have a bad feeling about the link.
*Which is disabled if I like the look of the full page art on the font page. Clicked on the Crysis link a couple of days ago.
Yes you can, we test internally before putting stuff live on the site.
(and off course, run linux bwahahahahahahahahaha)
Say, for example, hardware ads on bit which gave you multiple click through options. Personally I have a number of trusted places I'd rather buy hardware from on the internet, but if banner ads gave you more information; multiple resellers, listed prices, p+p, availability etc, it would make them more of a service than a hindrance.
I'm running AVG even tho its not the best... it eats ALOT of cpu horse power.
*Thats why I want a tri core! :b I dont care if its a failed quad core*
I've tried on IE and FireFox...
I laughed though, since i was on OS X at the time :D
Don't worry - the site is cached. It will catch up (it has now)
Ditto, Couldn't agree more.
So do many of my ex's. :D
Seriously, that sucks though. But not uncommon, I suppose.
omg, thank you! there's enough of their crap on the internet as it is!
Well thats good to know then, cheers for answering.
Sam
I F*****G _HATE_ those adverts more than you can imagine, I find them more annoying than pop-ups.
I guess that's nice, But avast gives theirs away for Free. :D
there is an effective way to disable those very annoying adds ... I did it a couple months ago and now that I formated I am about to do it again. I'll edit this post once I got it working
turns out I blocked every script related to intellitxt and it worked perfectly :D (tested on joblo.com)
I think a lot of the problem with ActiveX was the fact that IE is so integrated into the operating system, if you take control of IE you have a lot of control over the computer itself (A big problem with IIS servers too), i don't think flash is quite as bad as that
Yeah but the method relied on injecting malware ads into the DoubleClick network through a dodgy third-party ad reseller/aggregator, and most ad networks use these somewhere along the line, so they are all potentially vulnerable.
I'm surprised the advertisers are not up in arms about this - a few more of these sort of scares and we'll all be Firefox+AdBlock+NoScript..
Its gonna take alot more then that to move people to FF+AB+NS
There is no excuse given that excellent anti-virus products are now available for free. Such as Avast.;)
Back on topic, I see this as an excellent development. I block most ads, but I've heard that some sites are getting mad about that, and a few have even gone to the point of blocking Firefox users just in case. Now, though, I can claim that my ad blocker is just an additional layer of virus defense, rather than something to make my browsing more pleasant at the expense of people running pay-per-view ads (rather than pay-per-click, as I rarely click even when ads aren't blocked).