Not Much Money In MySpace Ads... But How About Some Spyware!

from the oops dept

While MySpace hasn't been able to do much to capitalize on all of those banner ad impressions the site is supposedly getting, it appears that others are figuring out how to monetize it for them. The latest is that some scammers figured out how to use a vulnerability to serve up spyware to MySpace visitors through (you guessed it) all of those ad banners. The researcher who discovered this claims the spyware got installed on over a million computers -- exploiting a flaw that Microsoft had patched months ago. Of course, this isn't the first time that MySpace has been used to distribute spyware. It seems that, even if Rupert Murdoch doesn't figure out how to squeeze a lot of money out of MySpace, scammers will do their best to do it for him.
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Reader Comments

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  • identicon
    John, 19 Jul 2006 @ 5:19pm

    yo

    FIRST!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Guy, 19 Jul 2006 @ 8:05pm

      Re: yo

      This has to stop if you don't have anything to say about the article don't post im tired of this what this says to me is that you have no life and surf the internet all day to find things that you can be first on well you know what stop it's meaningless and is Annoying as all hell


      Thank you

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        GeeeTTT OOOUUUTTT, 19 Jul 2006 @ 8:14pm

        Re: Re: yo

        The senseless post by Guy should be deleted!

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        concerned, 19 Jul 2006 @ 8:36pm

        Re: Re: yo

        Have you ever heard of a "period"???????

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Ron Obvious, 19 Jul 2006 @ 9:29pm

        Re: Re: yo

        PLEASE, stop feeding the trolls. Eventually they'll get hungry and wander over to Slashdot.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          DittoBox, 19 Jul 2006 @ 11:29pm

          Re: Re: Re: yo

          No they won't. We got linked to slashdot once and now they're wandering over here.

          This crap has got to stop. Techdirt simply needs to enable moderation and registration and remove anonymous posting.

          This site is built on the same stuff as slashdot (it used to be anyway), it shouldn't be hard.

          Or just pick some volunteer moderators to delete posts they deem as "crappy".

          Or just do a regexp for *first* on the first 3 posts made, if it's in there it doesn't get posted and the IP of the person posting gets added to the httpd.conf's denied list. (PS, that's a joke)

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Dmitriy, 19 Jul 2006 @ 5:34pm

    redirects

    In addition to spyware, I have personally seen profile redirects to myspace lookalike pages.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Mod, 19 Jul 2006 @ 7:25pm

      Re: redirects

      And people put in their emails and passwords then say "OMG. My MySpace got hacked!"

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    charlie potatoes, 19 Jul 2006 @ 5:35pm

    YO

    DUMBASS

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    tone, 19 Jul 2006 @ 5:35pm

    yo yo

    SECOND!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Simon, 19 Jul 2006 @ 6:24pm

    It's just natural selection in progress.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    T to da H-O-M-A-S, 19 Jul 2006 @ 6:45pm

    yo yo yo

    SIXTH!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 19 Jul 2006 @ 7:13pm

    Does anyone know if it is in Mozilla or in IE or both?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mozilla is for LOSERS, 19 Jul 2006 @ 8:16pm

    Use IE!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    John, 19 Jul 2006 @ 8:32pm

    Have you seen my ball?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Andrew Strasser, 19 Jul 2006 @ 9:14pm

    I second that.

    Throw Guy out. We could always wheel him down to the river and drop him in. Post something useful and we'll use it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Jul 2006 @ 9:27pm

    I have never seen so much spam in one place.

    Yet, I contribute, for there is absolutely nothing worth saying about this aricle.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Sohrab, 19 Jul 2006 @ 10:52pm

    Mike or anybody else, I dont get how somebody can access the advertisments in myspace and load them with spyware or are we saying they already had it in them?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Jul 2006 @ 10:53pm

    on the topic of the flaw. I am an avid myspace user and I am glad to being using FireFox because I am still spyware free.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Sean, 19 Jul 2006 @ 11:14pm

    lol..

    What gets me most is that MySpace doesn't screen ads before they put them on. I mean if it really was malware code they should have easily been able to find it in the code. Oh well, I use SlimeBrowser and rarely ever get SpyWare. Fucking idiots who use Internet Exploder -_-...

    But, people who spam with "first!" and bullshit like that, that gives nothing to the topic should just be IP banned. Most of them wouldn't even know how to get around it anyways -_-

    That's my two cents.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Caligula, 20 Jul 2006 @ 1:04am

    httpd.conf?

    is that a Linux thing? This site is run on Windows Server 2003 Web Edition!

    Oh and I almost forgot....


    21ST!!!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jul 2006 @ 7:23am

    Sean, you are an idiot. SlimBrowser is a shell for Internet Explorer.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Holly, 20 Jul 2006 @ 8:47am

    T get back on the subject

    I use Mysace almost everyday and I never realized until this articles they were having so many problems. Thank God I have a Kick Ass fire wall so far so good on my PC.

    And at first when I read this article it did amaze me that MySpace doesn't screen ads before they go up. But then I thought that there is little to no screening b/c there are all these backlashes on kids putting up half nude pictures.. So I am not too surprised... Just irritated.

    But I still love Myspace and I am not giving it up.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jul 2006 @ 10:36am

    Great, I'm going to have to check and clean the kids computers. For some reason they still use IE, even though Firefox is right there for them to use.

    BTW: Last post! For the moment

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    FLASH PLAYER IS THE GUILTY PARTY, 21 Jul 2006 @ 12:54pm

    Lay Person

    Looks like everyone is confused!

    The Flash Player plugin versions

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    FLASH PLAYER IS THE GUILTY PARTY, 21 Jul 2006 @ 12:56pm

    Lay Person

    Looks like everyone is confused!

    The Flash Player plugin, versions 8 or less, are the culprit. All those fancy images that move around on your screens and in the ads use an application called Flash owned by Adobe Systems.

    Get and install Flash Player 9. This will correct the flaw. It doesn't matter whether it's IE or Firefox they both use this application hence they are both vulnerable.

    What happens is that when the Flash Player loads there is a brief window of time where the player allows code to enter a users machine thereby rendering it's destructive path.

    That's pretty much it in lay terms.

    Good luck!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    CJ, 9 Dec 2006 @ 4:17pm

    yeah!

    I just wanted to say 28TH!!!...since everyone else was doing it :]

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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