I was saddened to spot today that
userfriendly.org have been hit by the malicious banner advertisements redirecting visitors to a Performance Optimizer site. UserFriendly
responded.
It seems that they had already dealt with the outbreak by the time I spotted the problem, so I didn't get the chance to grab some data and unmask which advertisement and advertising network was the source of the problem. All seems quiet now; I've seen one Flash ad this evening on the site, but that was innocent enough.
I went looking to see how widespread the banner ad outbreak that redirected to scanner.malware-scan.com (aka MalwareAlarm) is, and I stumbled upon
this thread at the Avira support forums. The first responder to that thread, Nicolae Mondoveanu, is apparently, an Avira employee and to be completely frank, he should be ashamed of himself. His response, to "Please use a more secure browser, like Firefox or Seamonkey" is simplistic and embarrassing to a security professional. I expect far more from an employee of Avira, especially one who purports to advise and support Avira users as an Avira employee. Guys, you need to get over the "Firefox is safer" attitude, ok? Start *really* helping your users.. .teach them safe surfing, teach them about the real dangers of the internet, teach them how to avoid danger, how to spot fraudsters and ripoffs and cons. Then we might start winning the fightback.
I see
MySpace has been hit recently (in my personal opinion MySpace is one of the Typhoid Mary's of the Internet, but that is a story for another day).
And, worryingly, on 2 November there is a report of a problem at an
MSN chat group - jeez, I hope they haven't been infiltrated again!
