The team over at Malwarebytes recently uncovered malicious code served up via advertisements from Google’s DoubleClick ad servers and the Zedo advertising platform.
Among the businesses affected, MediaPost reports, were The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post whose online ads were among the sites which had ads infected with the Zemot malware. So did the music site Last.FM.
Advertisements on these sites set off anti-virus warnings raising flags in Malwarebytes’ virus detection systems. The ads lead users to sites containing an exploit kit that tries to identify a vulnerable version of Adobe Flash or unpatched version of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Legitimate websites “entangled in this malvertising chain are not infected,” said Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher with Malwarebytes. “The problem comes from the ad network agency itself.”
Last month, Microsoft had identified the Zemot malware. We’re told the bug primarily wreaks havoc on machines running some versions of Windows.
To read the full report from MediaPost, click here.
