Yahoo Ads Spread CryptoWall Ransomware

[Marshall Honorof]

The CryptoWall ransomware, one of the most insidious bits of malware in the last few years, was showing up through legitimate ads on Yahoo.

Yahoo Ads Spread CryptoWall Ransomware : Read more

 

[dotaloc]

The irony! Hot on the heels of "How Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook Are Creating a Safer Internet."

 

[das_stig]

Yeh, their idea of safe is to only visit pages they deem acceptable and financially profitable for them. Wonder if Yahoo are liable for any damage done since it was their advertising system that was infecting systems ?

 

[InvalidError]

One more reason to use AdBlock and Flashblock to prevent infested ads from getting loaded in the first place.

 

[kittle]

One more reason to use AdBlock and Flashblock to prevent infested ads from getting loaded in the first place.

very much so. Also handy for AdBlock when you send donations

 

[razor512]

This is why programs like adblock are needed. If these companies do not care enough to properly vet the ads they put up, then the users should not care enough to display their ads.

The failure to properly vet the ads has already lead to a poisoned well for advertising because 99% of the ads are advertising crap that are malicious, bad deals, and crap that would normally be caught by a spam filter. It is impossible to trust an advertisement when little to no verification is done. (what is stopping someone from taking out an ad that leads to a phishing site?)

Companies need to also vet ads on if they are truly offing something good. Advertising only works when the viewer feels that they are benefiting from the ad also. Meaning, if someone is advertising a new videocard, then make sure the price for it is highly competitive. If you run a website and you do not like people blocking the ads, then do a better job at examining the ads, make sure that only truly good deals are shown in a way that does not annoy the user with things like popups or ads that cover actual content.

(I have never seen an ad that offered me something for a better price than I could get at the usual places that I shop)

 

[Darkk]

Yahoo should be running a proxy to tunnel all the ads through their servers for scanning before being sent to your computer. Of course they won't because of liability. Other than the obvious of not clicking on anything suspicious software like adblock is one way. If you have a high class router you can proxy all your connections to be scanned by virus software before it reaches your internal network.

 

[misnlink]

DecryptoLocker won't work on files corrupted by CryptoWall, it was set up for files corrupted by the earlier malware CryptoLocker, hence the name.
If you try anyway, you get the message:
"The file does not seem to be infected by CryptoLocker. Please submit a CryptoLocker infected file."
(3rd time attempting to post this comment)