Drudge, other sites flooded with malicious ads

[OhioChick]

Horoscope.com and Lyrics.com were also affected

09/24/2009

Criminals flooded several online ad networks with malicious advertisements over the weekend, causing popular Web sites such as the Drudge Report, Horoscope.com and Lyrics.com to inadvertently attack their readers, a security company said Wednesday.

The trouble started on Saturday, when the criminals somehow placed the malicious ads on networks managed by Google's DoubleClick, as well as two others: YieldManager and ValueClick's Fastclick network, according to Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher with ScanSafe.

The attack comes just a week after the New York Times Web site was tricked into displaying a deceptive 'scareware' advertisement for fake antivirus software from scammers pretending to be ad buyers with Vonage, an Internet telephony company.

Instead of trying to trick Web surfers into buying bogus software, these ads attacked.

They would pop up a nearly invisible window in the victim's browser that contained a maliciously encoded pdf document, which included attack code that placed a variant of the Win32/Alureon Trojan horse program on the victim's computer. Sometimes, the ads would also try to exploit a previously patched flaw in Microsoft's DirectShow software, Landesman said.

"The user would have seen a very brief opening of a blank pdf window and it would be at the bottom portion of their screen," she said. The Alureon Trojan is known to download additional malware and often hijack victims' search results, she said.

The pdf attacks apparently only affected victims with out-of-date versions of Adobe's Reader or Acrobat software, she added.

Between Saturday and Monday, the ads accounted for 11 percent of all Web pages blocked by ScanSafe's Web filtering software, a sign that many people were being presented with the malicious ads. And because the pdf pages were modified slightly every time they were displayed, most antivirus products didn't detect them.

More: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/092409-drudge-other-sites-flooded-with.html

[Kahuna]

1. I was doing a search for nutrition websites yesterday and got a couple

of attempted attacks yesterday.

[derby378]

2. Yet another reason not to visit Drudge (n/t)

[T Wolf]

3. I'd say that this is a great tactic to use against the reich-wing sites like Sludge.

Calling computer experts - do this as much as possible to penalize those who go to the repuke sites.

[bertman]

4. Unfortunately that sword cuts both ways. I'd sure hate for DU to get hit by something like that.

[T Wolf]

5. Sure. But do you admit it would be better for us to also fight back rather than only

and always be on the defensive - using ineffective tactics?

[bertman]

6. No, I don't agree with sabotaging a website. I DO agree with fighting back. The most

effective way to fight back is to use our "liberal media" types like Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann (and any others we can get on board) to debunk the lies that are being put forth by the right wing.

It's a fact that the right wing's financial backers can afford to spend lots more money than the left wing can, so we would be at a huge disadvantage. Not to mention that I would rather not see the American political scene degenerate into a who-can-disable-the-other-party's-communications-centers type of battle. It's bad enough now. Just try to imagine if every time you went to DU or Firedoglake your computer was infected with a virus. Big Bummer.

[T Wolf]

7. In an unbalanced fight, the more powerful always wins. Admitting (as you do) that the reich

has more wealth than we do should lead you to think of another approach.

Banking on three hours (KO, RM, ES) five days a week to counter hundreds of hours every day on all the other stations/networks is a plan for failure.

Our side does not even bring a plastic butter knife to the gunfight. But boy, do we feel noble about fighting fair.

[bertman]

8. Being noble is not part of the equation. Being smart is. There are other ways to accomplish

balancing the fight. Firedoglake is currently engaged in one very effective way--targeted ads that reveal Blue Dawg Turds for what they are. These ads are running in their home states.

I have been a supporter of MoveOn for a few years but lately I've been disappointed in MoveOn's methodology, which seems to be mostly mass emailings of form email letters that members can send to their reps and senators, or the President, or AG AND encouraging groups to show up at town-hall meetings. This can be effective, but it's a limited approach.

We have lots of creative minds in the progressive wing of the Democratic party. I think that we should use them in ways other than sabotage.

[tomm2thumbs]

9. true but if you donate, even a dollar, the ads don't show up on your computer which is swell

(maybe even if you donate a quarter - I dunno)