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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Crimevertising: Selling Into the Malware Channel

Summary: Krebs on Security describes "crimevertising": ads for illicit services embedded inside malware itself, including paid placements in the web-based administrative panels botnet customers use to control their bots. The author of the Blackhole Exploit Kit, who uses the nickname "Paunch," quoted $700 per month for an ad running across the kit's entire user base, and Sophos's 2012 Security Threat Report found that of malware detections in the second half of 2011 that were redirections on compromised legitimate sites, approximately half were believed to redirect to Blackhole exploit sites.

Key Takeaway: Blackhole's ad inventory was priced and sold to criminals at $700 a month, and roughly half of the redirection detections on compromised legitimate sites in late 2011 pointed at it - a reminder that the exploit kit behind much of that traffic ran a paying ad business on the same panel its customers used to watch victims arrive.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Malware
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