Computer Security Malicious No-Click-Required Flash Ads Affect 120 Million...

Malicious No-Click-Required Flash Ads Affect 120 Million Adult Site Visitors

malicious malvertising ads adult sitesCybercrooks and those who want to see the world burn are hell-bent on finding methods to attack computer users that may ultimately garner them a fast and healthy payday. In the latest ploys initiated by cybercrooks, malevolent flash advertisements are being flooded onto adult sites delivering a malicious payload that does not require a click on the mischievous ad.

A process called malvertising is something that we are very familiar with from the nearly countless reports we receive from computer users encountering malicious advertisements. Essentially, malvertising is a technique that utilizes online advertisements to spread malware through roguish methods.

Many recent malvertising campaigns have been ones that encroach upon legitimate websites. In most of the cases, cybercrooks perform devious actions to go through an advertising network to slip malicious ads to feed onto such sites. In the case of a recent malvertising campaign victimizing nearly 120 million people, the malicious ads were fed onto adult websites. What sets this malvertising campaign apart from all others, is the fact that the malicious ads were flash ads that did not require a click to deliver the malware payload.

Security vendor Malwarebytes detected malicious flash-based ads on five adult websites, which account for monthly traffic totals of about 122.9 million users. The flash ads were made up of specialized scripts that when a web browser loaded the adult sites the exploit code would automatically execute. Fundamentally, the malicious flash ads did not require a click on them to execute the malicious code, which infected the computer with malware that has been identified as the famous CryptoWall Ransomware threat in some cases.

As we know, the ransomware infection CryptoWall is aggressive in its actions to encrypt files and basically render a computer useless. With the vast spread of the recent malvertising campaign infecting upwards of 120 million computers visiting the affected adult sites, we may see a major influx of ransomware and other malware threats over the internet.

We strongly urge computer users, even those that must exploit their extracurricular activities by visiting adult sites, to utilize antivirus or antimalware applications to detect malware threats that may be injected from malicious flash-based advertisements. In knowing that the malicious flash advertisements do not require a click to inject malware onto your computer, there is no sure way of preventing infection other than through the use of the proper antivirus/antimalware software.

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