Ad Network Distributes Hundreds Of Infected Ads

A Scottish ad network that gets 10 billion impressions per month in his own words has been used in recent weeks to distribute hundreds of infected ads. Through the ads, which appeared under other porn sites and torrent sites, ransomware was disseminated.

This enables anti-malware company Malwarebytes . The company in the past two weeks had more than 400 unique infected ads of the Scottish advertising network AdsTerra, also known as Terra Clicks stemmed. Malwarebytes decided to warn AdsTerra but has not received a response yet. The ads direct visitors unnoticed by the Magnitude exploitkit. This exploitkit uses known vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player and Internet Explorer to infect computers with Cerber-ransomware.

Users who are not redirected to the Magnitude exploitkit, for example because they use certain security software or a virtual machine, will see a pop-up that there is a problem with their computer and they need to call a helpdesk. These are the familiar phone scam in which fraudsters try to gain access to the computer and victims to resolve not charge existing problems.

Tip: Adobe Reader Lets You Open Any Embedded Files

In recent weeks, cyber criminals several times PDF files sent which was hiding a malicious Word document. Once users opened the PDF file they were asked if they wanted to open the embedded Word document.

The Word document contains another macro that installed malware on the computer. The macro is executed only if users set it, but in practice this is an effective method of attack. Users and administrators can easily avoid, however, Adobe Reader opens these embedded documents, says Didier Stevens, handler at the Internet Storm Center. Through the Trust Manager, available via the settings of the PDF reader option can be switched off, as Stevens Also in this video shows.