Online Ads Could be the Grinch that Steals Your Holiday Cheer This Season

Those ads you see every time you go to a website these days can be dangerous to your computer and other device health. Malvertising is one of the newer ways cyber criminals are attacking. One attack that authorities thought they had quashed has resurfaced in the middle of the holiday shopping season on several websites including Yahoo and MSN. A group being called AdGholas uses sophisticated tricks to get malware onto devices through advertisements. This is Malvertising.

This group seeds malicious programs into ad networks in order to infect large numbers of devices. They can deliver ransomware, banking Trojans, and any number of other nasty things; sometimes without the user knowing what is going on. This may allow the malware to do damage for a long time without being detected.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to stop this from happening. However, there is some recourse to lower risk.

• Use caution when clicking on ads. If you hover over it and it isn’t clear where the link will take you, don’t go further.
• Type the name of the store into your address line manually. This will ensure you are indeed going to the right place. If you don’t know the URL, try doing a search for the store. If you still are not confident, perhaps skip that place.
• Keep all anti-virus and anti-malware software and apps updated at all times. If you don’t have these on your devices, take a bit of time to install them. Many good ones are available at no charge. Make sure to research them first so you know they aren’t malicious as well.
• Keep all of your software and operating systems updated. If you see that one is available, don’t delay. Apply it. A lot of malware succeeds because it takes advantage of vulnerabilities in unpatched products.
• Ensure you are using browsers that are supported by their developers. Microsoft, for example, no longer supports many versions of Internet Explorer. This means that if a vulnerability is found, it will not be fixed.
• Consider using ad-blocking software. These products will prevent the ads from appearing in the first place.

This attack by AdGholas is considered one of the most sophisticated attacks security researchers have seen. It promotes a so-called privacy tool called Browser Defense as well as a screen-capture application called Broxu. This is according to Eset, a company that provides security solutions. The malware will try to take advantage of vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash and sometimes the ad doesn’t even need to be clicked. This group uses a type of technology called steganography, which is embedding malicious code into images. According to technology company Proofpoint, the first time this was successfully deployed was by AdGholas back in July when the group was able to expose its bad ads to over one million computers per day.

The latest attacks seem to be avoiding targets in the US but are hitting Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K. However, just because it hasn’t been seen in the US yet, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Always use caution when using the Internet to shop.