Comments on: Microsoft Goes Hunting for Malvertisers. Are They the Same Guys Who Hacked the New York Times?

By: Remove Antispy Safeguard Virus

Remove Antispy Safeguard Virus — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:22:00 +0000

Maybe they are the same guys.

By: Mitch Stone

Mitch Stone — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:34:47 +0000

I didn’t get your joke, Peter. Maybe because it’s a Monday.

I read the Click Forensics article. It did not help my comprehension of the situation very much, and I’m more technical than average, so I doubt many would get anything useful out of it.

In any event, as nearly as I can tell, my main point hasn’t been addressed by the experts. My reading and personal experience with this thing suggests that web servers are being hacked to host this malware. To me, that seems like a bigger story than the Times running an ad from a company they didn’t throughly vet — as if anyone does that anyway.

By: Weekend Update 9.19.09- The Real World—Silicon Valley Edition. | Beth Callaghan | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:31:11 +0000

[...] Microsoft Goes Hunting for Malvertisers. Are They the Same Guys Who Hacked the New York Times? [...]

By: TechKive » Blog Archive » Microsoft Goes Hunting for Malvertisers. Are They the Same Guys Who Hacked the New York Times? [MediaMemo]

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:19:35 +0000

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By: Peter Kafka

Peter Kafka — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:02:00 +0000

You should upgrade to a CD player, Mitch! Wave of the future.

You get infected if you the ad convinces you to download an .exe file. Unclear what happens after that (anyone want to try it and tell us?) though the stuff the Click Forensics guys are looking at is designed to harness mayn computers w/click fraud in mind, as noted above.

By: Mitch Stone

Mitch Stone — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:35:35 +0000

Peter, what do your experts say about the way the code was hosted? It seems in all of these incidents, the actual malware was hosted on a compromised web server. How are the hackers pulling that off, I wonder? Also, do we know anything about what happens to a Windows user who stumbles into this exploit? Are they automatically infected, or do they have to click on a page link? And if so, what with?

At the risk of becoming a broken record on this, I think too many words are being expended on tut-tutting the NY Times et. al., when so little of real substance is known about how this attack works and what it does to its real victims.

Perhaps your experts can offer us some news we can use.