More Malware-bearing Ads Appear on Lyrics.com, Drudgereport.com, and Horoscope.com

Malicious advertisements are starting to pop-up, literally, on several large websites. It is apparent, by the growing number of malicious ads seen on several websites, that hackers have found a relatively new outlet for spreading rogue security applications. In addition to spreading malicious applications, hackers are using fake advertisements to exploit software vulnerabilities in applications such as Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader.

Several websites that you may have visited in the past, lyrics.com, horoscope.com, nytimes.com, newsweek.com and the list goes on, have been attacked with malicious advertising banners. One of the latest attacks on the popular news sources, nytimes.com, was a malicious advertising popup that if clicked on, lead computer users to a download of a fake anti-virus application and a Trojan horse infection.

We could be facing a new epidemic that not only affects the systems of web surfers, but causes serious issues for the balanced revenue stream that drives the Internet as we know it. Advertising runs a big portion of the Internet. If companies cannot trust the ads displayed on their websites, then we could be facing an issue that hurts the pockets of web publishers and publishing networks.

Hackers are using more sophisticated methods to spread malware for the purpose of selling off bogus security software. The best way for computer users to guard themselves against these attacks is to use good sense when surfing the Internet and keeping all of your software up-to-date with the latest security patch applied when available. Remember, hackers are getting more creative by the day, if something looks suspicious or too good to be true, then more than likely, it is.