Malvertising – exploiting web advertising
Aditya K. Sood, Richard J. Enbody · Computer Fraud & Security · 2011
Online advertisements provide a convenient platform for spreading malware. Since ads provide a significant portion of revenue on the web, significant effort is put into attracting users to them. Malicious agents take advantage of this skillful attraction and then redirect users to malicious sites that serve malware. Advertisers use Web 2.0 functionality to provide flexibility and portability in sharing third-party content across different networks, websites and blogs. They use widgets, frames and Javascript banners in order to load and execute content from ad servers into user websites. But attackers can take advantage of flaws in features such as widgets and iframes to redirect browsers to malicious websites that deliver malware. To appreciate the severity and prevalence of this class of attack, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP.org) recently placed invalidated redirects and forwards in its ‘2010 top 10’ list. Aditya Sood and Richard Enbody of Michigan State University discuss the exploitation model of malvertisements and the way different modes of attacks are used to infect users.