
PornHub served up malware in ads for a year undetected - ballenf
https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/kovter-group-malvertising-campaign-exposes-millions-potential-ad-fraud-malware
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sprremix
This is a good development. This proves the point that a lot of ads found on
these websites are extremely shady and dangerous, and that we - as users -
don't desire these crazy amount of ads on every single fucking website. These
cases strengthen the need of a good adblocker because this story will
hopefully spread around, causing an increase in adblock usage thus causing an
overall decrease in ad revenue and hopefully we will see a decline of websites
filled with advertisements

~~~
vanattab
Or, you know... you could open your wallet/purse. The response to decreasing
ad revenue would not be less ads it would be more ads filled with even more
psychological engineering.

~~~
krapp
Advertising on the web was never stable or reliable as a revenue source, it
just seemed that way because the infrastructure of ad blocking wasn't
available or well known.

The well of consumer trust has been poisoned by companies that saw the web as
a Wild West platform where they could make money without bothering with ethics
or standards, but now users are aware that all of those malignant and annoying
ads can easily be blocked, and companies are getting desperate as they realize
all too late that they were participating in an honor system in which they had
far less power than they wanted.

Why would we surrender and pay the Danegeld when we're clearly winning the
war?

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jimktrains2
I've never understood why ads couldn't just be images. I guess it's just an
attention grabbing arms race to the bottom?

~~~
jjirsa
Because the value of an ad is as much in knowing what you’re looking at as it
showing you something - the JS is there to track and identify, not to show you
pretty pictures.

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daxorid
Note: This is NOT a drive-by loader. It is no more newsworthy than anybody
else getting owned by extremely obvious phishing attacks.

I know it's unpopular to "blame the victim", but in 2017, if you're not even
casually glancing at the url, I'm not sure how much sympathy these victims
deserve.

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thatgerhard
The big problem is that nobody wants to admit that they use these sites (even
though a large percentage do), so if something gets infected we don't talk
about it and as a result it doesn't get resolved.

I'm glad someone wasn't too repressed to call them on this.

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freestockoption
The day I got a you-have-a-virus-call-us popup on Chrome on my phone was the
day I switched over to Firefox with ublock. I wasn't even visiting a sketchy
site.

~~~
bfred_it
This has nothing to do with Chrome vs Firefox though; you added ublock, that
made the difference.

~~~
freestockoption
Chrome on mobile doesn't have extensions. :) I still use Chrome on desktop.

