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Yahoo ads accidentally spewed malware
Washington Post ^ | August 4 at 1:43 PM | Andrea Peterson

Posted on 08/04/2015 1:58:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin

The attack started on July 28 and has now been resolved, according to the Times. A Yahoo spokesperson declined to comment to The Washington Post on how long the issue persisted, saying that the company's investigation is ongoing.

The attack leveraged a bug in Adobe Flash -- a graphics program with a history of security problems that many developers have urged users to dump.

The type of scheme used, known as "malvertising," takes advantage of the online advertising system that supports much of the Web: The bad guys buy up digital ad space, then use it to serve up malicious software to visitors of legitimate sites. In this case, those sites included Yahoo's sports, news and finance sites, according to the Times.

When people using Windows computers visited the site, the infected ads sent them malicious code that checked to see if their computer had an out of date version of Flash -- which the bad guys could then potentially use to hijack the computer.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption
KEYWORDS: malware; malwareinads; yahoo; yahooads

1 posted on 08/04/2015 1:58:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

I’m not surprised. I hate Yahoo. All ads and many popups. Who are they kidding.


2 posted on 08/04/2015 2:10:11 PM PDT by Beowulf9
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To: BenLurkin

The headline says “accidentally” yet the article calls it an “attack”... are these people not communicating at the office?


3 posted on 08/04/2015 2:14:14 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: GeronL

It was an accident they were caught.


4 posted on 08/04/2015 2:23:47 PM PDT by bgill ( CDC site, "we still do not know exactly how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: BenLurkin

I just installed Win 10 on a fresh 1TB SSD. I am seeing how long I can go without Flash.


5 posted on 08/04/2015 2:28:02 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics)
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To: bgill

lol


6 posted on 08/04/2015 2:58:46 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: BenLurkin

Been meaning to uninstall. Thanks for the reminder.


7 posted on 08/04/2015 3:40:13 PM PDT by Excellence (Marine mom since April 11, 2014)
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