New York Times rogue ad shows perils of website security
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A malware attack against visitors to the New York Times website NYTimes.com this weekend provided a powerful demonstration of how website security vulnerabilities can be exploited to infect potentially millions of computers.
According to the Times, the paper hosted an advertisement on its website that was swapped out with attack code that presented site visitors with pop-ups warning that their PC had been infected with malware. Site visitors were directed to download a fake antivirus called Personal Antivirus.
Web security experts noted that this type of attack, called scareware, tricks millions of users into purchasing phony antivirus products.
But such an attack on a website as well-trafficked as NYTimes.com, which gets millions of hits per day, also demonstrates how hackers can subvert trusted sites with malware.
"This attack provides a perfect demonstration of how being able to inject malicious content into ad content is a powerful way of hitting a large audience," said Fraser Howard at the blog of security firm Sophos.
Security experts said the malicious ad on NYTimes.com contained an HTML element known as an iframe, which can inject code into a website from a remote server.
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