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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Porn surfers have a dirty secret. They're using Internet Explorer:

They're back—attacks that use booby-trapped Web ads to install malware on the computers of unsuspecting visitors.

[...] But over the past month, malvertising has made something of a comeback, security firm Malwarebytes reported this week. Company researchers said they recently found two different groups placing booby-trapped ads on xHamster, a site with more than 1 billion monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb. The ads redirect visitors to sites that serve malicious code. When viewed with Internet Explorer or Adobe Flash, the code can exploit critical vulnerabilities in unpatched versions of Internet Explorer.

"Threat actors still leveraging exploit kits to deliver malware is one thing, but end users browsing with Internet Explorer is another," Malwarebytes researchers wrote. "Despite recommendations from Microsoft and security professionals, we can only witness that there are still a number of users (consumer and enterprise) worldwide that have yet to migrate to a modern and fully supported browser."

Internet Explorer has always been one of the more targeted browsers. In part, that was because of its once dominant market share. Subpar security protections, when compared to Chrome and later Firefox, was another key reason. Microsoft has since released Edge and encouraged all users to adopt it. But the software maker continues to offer IE since custom plugins and software often lock organizations and individuals into using the outdated browser.

The malvertising renaissance seems to be motivated by attackers "squeezing the last bit of juice from vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Flash Player (due to retire for good next year)," the Malwarebytes post observed.

Original Submission

1. "upstart" - https://soylentnews.org/~upstart/
2. "Porn surfers have a dirty secret. They're using Internet Explorer" - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/ads-that-install-malware-see-a-resurgence-on-porn-sites/
3. "reported this week" - https://blog.malwarebytes.com/social-engineering/2020/09/malvertising-campaigns-come-back-in-full-swing/
4. "more than 1 billion monthly visits" - https://www.similarweb.com/website/xhamster.com/#overview
5. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=43488

printed from SoylentNews, Porn Surfers Have a Dirty Secret. They’re Using Internet Explorer on 2024-04-23 14:18:34