Zirconium’s tech support malvertising on Microsoft’s website
Congratulations! You have been selected to win a $100 gift card! Have you ever gotten one of those ugly messages popping up in your web browser? Not only are they annoying, they can also be very dangerous. A gang of web browser hijackers upped their malvertising game by creating 28 fake ad agencies. The group, tackily named Zirconium, made over a billion ad impressions on unsuspecting victims last year. The ads were force-redirect popups that opened a spam webpage.
So how did Zirconium manage to create so many fake agencies to sell ads to websites? Most of the agencies built up what seemed to be a legitimate history to gain credibility. They created Twitter and LinkedIn profiles with stock photo profile pictures as well as their own websites. They sold seemingly real ads to create a sense of establishment before selling malvertisements on larger and often credible websites, including Microsoft and Facebook. After hijacking thousands of devices and making billions of ad impressions, the group was finally stopped.
With more and more technology driving our every day lives, such malware could do major damage to our devices and personal lives. Cyber attackers may use malvertising as a way to gain access to your browsing history, passwords, and personal information. They can even use it as a way to completely crash your device, rendering it unusable. So what can you do to protect yourself from such malicious activity? According to MakeUseOf.com, it is extremely important to keep your browsers and antivirus software up to date, use script management add-ons, and disable Silverlight and Flash. Until the Internet is funded in a different way, ads will continue to plague our browsers. It is up to us to prevent and respond to ads and potential threats in a safe and secure manner.
What is Malvertising?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gang-crooks-hijacked-web-browser-215742162.html
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/malvertising-factory-with-28-fake-agencies-delivered-1-billion-ads-in-2017/
I absolutely hate malvertising. Not only is it harmful for people that click it, but I am less likely to go back to the website where I experienced it because I associate it with being unsafe. Your last remark about how the Internet is funded by ads was interesting and made me think about all the ads I see on a daily basis every time I use the Internet.There are ads before I watch videos, at the end of videos, and if I happen to be on Facebook, even in the middle of my video. I click out of ads to read articles I actually wanted to read and even have to scroll by promoted tweets. I can’t be the only one who hates internet ads and I wonder what would happen if the internet were ad free. This article I read, with ads of course, details a couple of alternative choices to the Internet we know now.
https://readwrite.com/2015/06/09/advertising-web-online-ads-old-broken/