Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Major web sites serving up malware via ads

Big sites, probably you visit some:
Top-flight US online publishers are serving up adverts that attempt to install ransomware and other malware on victims' PCs.

Websites visited by millions of people daily – msn.com, nytimes.com, aol.com, nfl.com, theweathernetwork.com, thehill.com, zerohedge.com and more – are accidentally pushing out booby-trapped adverts via ad networks, warn infosec researchers.
These are served up via flash, which gives you some options to protect yourself:
Patching regularly, uninstalling Silverlight or setting plugins such as Flash to click-to-play, will defend against attacks from dodgy banner adverts.
All good advice.  Windows Update should be set to automatic*, Silverlight is not needed anywhere that I've seen and can be uninstalled, and using Flashblock or setting your browser to click-to-play are all excellent suggestions.

* Careful about the Windows 10 upgrade pester offer.  Read the popup carefully - the opt out is way at the end.  Tricksey hobbitses ....

3 comments:

  1. In fact, my EMS agency just adopted new patient report software that requires Silverlight for the Web interface. Normal use is through a traditional desktop application, but all administration and QA interactions are through the website.

    Unfortunately, all the other software available is pretty much crap.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is the reason I run ad blocker software. Every time I've tried to be good and let the ads run, I ended up fighting off some sort of malware. Until the ad networks clean up their ads, I'll keep on blocking them.

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  3. I've set Windows update to ask me if I want to update. I found Automatic Updates to be painful since they often want to update on shut down. When I shutdown, I want to shut down, not wait 10 minutes.

    Thanks for the other two hints. I set Silverlight and Flash to "Ask to Activate".

    You know, you could do this computer security stuff for a living. ;)

    ReplyDelete

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