Adblock Plus and (a little) more
80% of malware served through ads? · 2007-03-28 03:45 by Wladimir Palant
PC World published an article on the analysis done by security firm Finjan that shows that 80% of all malicious code is served through online advertising. Now as with every statistic their selection might not have been representative, I have strong doubts that this number is accurate. But the trend is clear — there is much to be gained by infiltrating advertising networks, it allows hackers to inject their code into many sites including the ones where users don’t expect it. So the common advise to avoid visiting “shady” sites has once again lost some of its appeal, ads are displayed on “serious” sites as well. But I guess it will not stop most webmasters from trusting third-party content unconditionally by embedding scripts from third-party servers into their web pages. If these third-party servers get compromised their web site will be automatically affected as well, with identity stealing being the least serious consequence.
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