New York Times Malicious Ads Attack

Sophos reported this week on an attack on the New York Times website, where readers of the New York Times website NYTimes.com were exposed to danger as the popular media outlet served up malicious advertisements to some of its visitors.

According to a posting at the NYTimes.com website, some readers saw a pop-up messaging warning them that their computer had been infected, and urging them to install fake anti-virus software (also known as scareware).

As Sophos reported, this isn't a new malware attack, as other media outlets (such as the Daily Mail, ITV and RadioTimes) have also fallen prey to serving up malware inside malicious ads using fake anti-virus alerts.

In late breaking news it was discovered that the hackers purchased advertising space directly from the New York Times, posing as internet telephone company Vonage.

Fake anti-virus alerts have become one of the biggest revenue-generators for cybercriminals, and as a result we're seeing more attacks all the time either planting malicious scareware on compromised websites, posing as legitimate security companies, or explotiing hot internet search topics.

This recent malware exploit reiterates the new paradigm of security in enterprise environments, where web security is just as, if not more important than email security. Almost all organizations today run email anti-virus and anti-malware scanning. It's just as important to be doing it for web traffic using a proxy as the security device for web browsing. Just make sure your web proxy has up to date anti-malware and anti-virus software along with up to date URL database filtering.