Monday, October 22, 2007

Details of Hijacked 24/7 Ad Server Emerge

Gregg Keizer writes on ComputerWorld:

Hackers have hijacked a server operated by Internet advertising company 24/7 Real Media Inc. and are using it to seed legitimate Web sites with ads carrying attack code, Symantec Corp. said Friday.

Windows users who visited sites with the attacking ads were infected if they browsed with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and had RealNetworks Inc.'s popular RealPlayer media player program installed on their PCs, Symantec said in an analysis written by three company researchers. This is the first time that malware has piggybacked on Internet ads served from a major advertising firm.

The attack should be a warning to the Web, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. "So much of the content we consume today comes from many syndication services," Storms said in an e-mail interview. "We trust that the content provided to us by Internet 'blue chips' is safe from malware. "

More here.

1 Comments:

At Tue Oct 23, 09:51:00 AM PDT, Blogger Edward Vielmetti said...

This suggests there's a market for third party audits of advertising networks - monitoring of their output and making sure that it is not dangerous (and if it is, flag and alert)

 

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