Major sites including New York Times and BBC hit by ‘ransomware’ malvertising
A large amount of the big news sites have seen the adverts hijacked by some malicious campaign which tries to install ransom-ware on the user’s computers, according to the warning issued by the security researchers ‘Malware bytes’.
The attack that is targeted at the United States users hit the sites including the New York Times, the BBC, AOL & the NFL over this weekend.
The targeted sites are visited by the billions of visitors. The malware is delivered through a multiple advertising network & is utilized by a number of vulnerabilities, consisting of a recently patched flaw in the Microsoft’s former flash competitor Silver light that was discontinued in the year 2013.
When the infected adverts have hit the users, they will redirect the page to the servers by hosting the malware that includes a widely utilized among-st cyber criminals ‘Angler exploit kit’.
This kit then tries to find any back door through which it can get into the target computer where it will install the cryptographer style software that encrypts the user’s hard drive & demands payment in bitcoin for the keys to unlock it.
Such software which are known as ransom-ware are fast becoming a very popular kind of malware for the criminals to install on the compromised computers by beating out the lesser threats like adware or Trojans. Recently during this month, the first Mac OS X ransom-ware was seen as part of an infected installation of the BitTorrent client transmission.
While the drive-by installations tend to demand only one or two bitcoins as a ransom ware worth a few hundred pounds are more targeted ransom-ware attacks have demanded much big in payment. The vector of an attack through a compromised advertising network will also serve to inflame the debate around the ad-blockers.
The browser plugins are attacked as a modern-day protection racket & are criticized because of harming business model of the free online publications but users counter which protect their devices from the attacks of such sort and also creating the web surfing experience quick, much pleasant & less draining on the mobile devices’ batteries.
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