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New York Times Hijacked By Malware Scammer

New York Times Hijacked By Malware Scammer

Postby Grav!ty » Sun Sep 13, 2009 11:54 pm

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The New York Times Serves Up Some Malware

by Peter Kafka
September 13, 2009


Here’s a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.

The paper says “some readers” have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead. While the Times doesn’t spell this out, it has likely had its site hijacked by a “malware” scammer who is trying to trick visitors into installing pernicious software onto their hard drives.

MediaMemo reader Tim Minter has passed along an image of the pop-up (click image to enlarge). Here’s his description of the way it appeared on his desktop:

The ad hijack[ed] my computer. Say I’m reading an article (the Clean Water Act was the one that caught me). It then redirects my browser involuntarily to sex-and-the-city.cn. That site then redirects to the ad I screen-captured.

At no time did I click anything. That’s what is so nefarious about this malware.

Thankfully, since I run OS X, I knew immediately it was malware (seeing WindowsXP on a Mac where that’s not installed is suspicious).



More at: All Things Digital
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