Hackers Use Banner Ads On Major Sites To Hijack Your PC

If you've seen any of the ads, you may have experienced something like this: You're on a legitimate site. Your browser window closes down. A new browser window comes up, redirecting you to an antivirus site, while a dialog box comes up telling you that your computer is infected and that your hard drive is being scanned. The malware tries to download software to your computer and scans your hard drive again. (Here's a video demonstration of the rogue ads.) The malware looks like a ordinary Flash file, with its redirect function encrypted, so that when publishers upload it, the malware is not detectable. Once deployed on a site, the Flash file launches the malicious redirects, which appear to be triggered at preset times or at selected Web domains. John Mark Schofield, a Los Angeles IT director, encountered the ads on Canada.com. He thinks that because he was on a Mac OS computer, the damage wasn't so severe. "My feeling is that it would have caused me a lot more grief if I had been on a Windows computer: It may have installed the malware. Instead, it took over my browser, which I just fixed by exiting Firefox," Schofield says. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/11/doubleclick --------- Here's the solution. 1) Get the latest Firefox - http://www.firefox.com 2) Add the Flashblock plugin. http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ 3) Add the No Script Plugin. http://noscript.net/faq And more addons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ [Proofreader’s note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on November 20, 2007]

Note: http://www.wired.com/te... http://www.firefox.com http://flashblock.mozde... http://noscript.net/faq https://addons.mozilla....