Internet Again Exposed To Contaminated Ads

In recent weeks several popular websites appeared infected ads, making the potential for at least 10 million Internet users have run risk of infection. The actual number of people that the received ads to see infected and as a consequence thereof became infected is not known. The ads pointed to a copy of the Angler Exploitkit.

This exploitkit tries users silently through vulnerabilities in popular software such as Adobe Flash Player to infect with malware. It regularly happens that the ads or exploits are displayed only to visitors from certain countries. In case the infected advert appears the attack can only succeed if the visitor uses the attacked software or browser plug-in instance is not up to date.

The sites where the ads would appear according to statistics from security Cyphort SimilarWeb and get at least 10 million visitors per month. The most popular websites showing the infected ads were found in Vietnam, Greece, Indonesia and Thailand. Earlier this month, the ads were also found on the Japanese edition of the Huffington Post. Earlier this year warned Cyphort even for infected ads on popular websites. Even when it came to the Huffington Post.

Malicious Ads Distribute By AOL Advertisement's Network

Criminals have AOL's advertising network used to show ads on the infected websites of the Huffington Post, and many other sites. The ads pointed to a website where a exploit kit (Neutrino Exploit Kit or Sweet Orange Exploit Kit) turned that made abuse of a leak in Adobe Flash Player.

In case users were using an outdated version of Flash Player they could become infected with the Kovter-ransomware. This ransomware locks the computer and that the user has committed a crime and then to pay a fine to get access again.According to security firm Cyphort discovered that the attack is striking that the attackers used a combination of HTTP and HTTPS redirects to the servers that were used to hide in the attack.

Both Huffingtonpost.com as the Canadian website of the popular news were found infected ads according Cyphort.Huffingtonpost.com gets 51 million monthly visitors. Also FHM.com, gamezone.com and weatherbug.com included the target of this' malvertising campaign. Further investigation revealed that the ads were distributed via the AOL ad network.