Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Scareware launched from tech blog


40 million people have fallen victim to scareware in last year. Visitors to technology blog Gizmodo are being warned that they could have picked up more than tips about the latest must-have gadget.

According to security firm Sophos, the website was delivering advertisements "laced with malware" last week.

A statement on the Gizmodo website admits that it was tricked into running Suzuki adverts which were in fact from hackers.

It follows a similar problem on the New York Times website.

Last month the New York Times' website was targeted by a gang of hackers who purchased ad space on the site by posing as internet telephone company, Vonage.

In both cases the adverts served up fake anti-virus software - known as scareware.

Scareware attempts to convince users that their computer is infected with viruses and trojans, and tricks them into downloading "remedies" which are harmful and can be used by criminals to get at information such as credit card details.

Really sorry

Gizmodo gets a huge amount of traffic with more than 3.1 million page views per day.

It has issued an apology to readers.

"I'm really sorry but we had some malware running on our site in ad boxes for a little while last week on Suzuki ads. They somehow fooled our ad sales team through an elaborate scam.

BBC News

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