Virus In The Ads
from the still-using-IE? dept
Because it isn't already easy enough to get a virus on your computer with IE, it appears that an ad serving company with a number of big name clients had its machines compromised for a time over the weekend. Rather than just seeing an ad, certain visitors using Internet Explorer on an unpatched Windows machine would have a virus downloaded while they were visiting websites from The Register, NBC Universal, AtomSchockwave, The Golf Channel and a variety of other sites. While anyone who was using a different OS or browser (or adequately patched) wouldn't have a problem, this does still show how much more risky it's getting to do anything on the internet without making sure everything is locked up tight. It used to be that people trying to push out web-born malware would try to trick people into visiting a site. However, with things like this, it shows how much more aggressive some are getting -- trying to make legitimate sites serve up destructive files without people realizing it.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Viruses in RSS?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]