In the last couple of days, visitors of a number of highly popular websites have been targeted with malicious adverts that attempted to install malware (mostly ransomware, but also various Trojans) on their systems.
The websites in question were those of the NY Times, the BBC, Newsweek, and The Hill, as well as Microsoft’s MSN website, Aol.com, the Weather Network, the HNL, and Realtor.com. The number of monthly visitors to each of these ranges from tens of millions to over one billion (the MSN portal).
The websites themselves weren’t compromised. The problem was that the the ad networks these sites use – Google, AppNexus, AOL, Rubicon – were tricked into serving the malicious ads, which would lead users to sites hosting an exploit kit.
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