This Holiday Season, Don’t Be Surprised by Unwanted ‘Gifts’
Source: Jaikumar Vijayan
Consumers and online retailers beware. ’Tis the season for a spike in malicious advertisements, or malvertisements.
Cyber criminals have made a fine art out of imperceptibly slipping malicious ads onto popular shopping websites. And they gear up to swarm the Internet with malvertisements during the upcoming holiday shopping season.
Most website publishers generally are not equipped to detect malvertisements that typically come and go, the better to elude antivirus filters.
This seasonal phenomenon continues to pose a major security threat for consumers and retailers alike.
Online shoppers who navigate to the wrong website at the wrong moment can get their computing devices infected ― turning over control to these attackers ― simply by visiting a webpage carrying a corrupted ad.
Malicious ads basically are online advertisements crafted to deliver spyware, ransomware and other malware on to end-user systems. They usually are rendered as targeted pop-up advertisements or as banner ads on online retail sites, news portals, social media sites and gaming and adult platforms.
Unlike other malware delivery mechanisms, which require the victim to click on a link, open an email attachment, or take some other action, malvertisements often require no user interaction in order to work.
Sometimes, the mere act of visiting a webpage with malicious ads on it is enough to infect a system. In other cases, users can infect their computers when they are lured into clicking on rogue Flash updates, fake Java updates and fake anti-virus alerts.
| }
|