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Cyber Risks · Cisco Talos

Malvertising: Online advertising's darker side

Summary: Cisco Talos describes malvertising as malicious actors bidding on ads in real-time bidding exchanges and pushing them through layers of 302 redirects until victims land on malicious content such as fake Flash players, tech support scams, or exploit kits like RIG. Talos reports a marked increase in global RIG activity over the past several weeks largely driven by malvertising, and notes that UTM tracking parameters can carry details such as browser and location that let attackers target specific systems.

What's compelling: Malvertising gives an exploit kit a far larger victim pool than a single compromised website, and because the redirect chain can point to a legitimate ad and only shift to a malicious destination in targeted cases, blocking the final server does not contain the campaign the way taking down one compromised site would.

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Topics
Malware
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