Malvertisement

Malware hidden in ads

[gn_wendy]

I recently got multiple warnings of malicious content included on a website I work with.

I know for a fact that it's not a problem with the site and one virus-blocker blocked a specific ad-link.

ergo = the ads are delivering the malicious code

Is this a problem anyone else is seeing. As far as I know (and have heard from others) the network is 100% legitimate; and there have been no other issues up until about one week ago.

How do I deal with this? Any tools I can use to check/crawl the content being delivered?

[engine]

Could the malware be on the local computer?

[gn_wendy]

Could the malware be on the local computer?

This was my first(second) guess too. First I ruled out that it wasn't the page/site itself.

Then I ruled out anything local (machine/browser/OS et al) ... seems it only happens with XP on most browsers/versions - and safari seems unaffected, but not 100% on that.

[martinibuster]

Hackers served malware on the NYTimes site via the ads a couple months ago. So it's possible to infect an ad serving company and have it display across their network.

[gn_wendy]

thanks martinibuster for the input.

I read about that and am aware of the possibility. The site I am working with uses a third party blind network, so there are really multiple points where an ad could have been infected, or even been malvertisement from the very beginning.

My question is, if there is anything I can do on this end, short of turning off the ads from that network. Also, that would not sit well with the site owners...