TechWeek Europe has reported an advertising attack which ran for almost three weeks on major websites such as eBay UK, The Drudge Report and TalkTalk, and advertising networks including DoubleClick’s EMEA network. The campaign used the Angler Exploit Kit to carry out fraud schemes or install ransomware on the victim’s system.
Devin Redmond, Vice President & General Manager at Proofpoint explains: “We see the bad guys taking it up a notch with social media. What’s occurring now is that in addition to jumping on websites using ad networks, groups are using social media sites as another outlet to drive traffic to malicious sites and payloads. They are preying on the audiences of major social sites and, in an interesting twist, are using the trending topic of the site instead of a general ad to capture people. For example, they will jump on the social account for a trending movie and offer access to exclusive content or special screenings and when the user clicks on a shortened link they can be phished or infected from there. Enterprise brands can actually prevent this and protect their customers by using remediation technologies and processes to keep their social accounts and sites clean.”