• Articles
    • Editorial Articles
    • Research Articles
    • WatchGuard Articles
  • The 443 Podcast
  • Threat Landscape
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Contribute to Secplicity

Secplicity - Security Simplified

Powered by WatchGuard Technologies

WatchGuard Security Prediction #5 – Jar Jar Can’t Resist Ads from the Dark Side

December 9, 2015 By Corey Nachreiner

Malvertising, the combination of the words malware and advertising, is an attack where criminals booby-trap a legitimate, trusted website with a malicious code by sneaking it in through a third party advertising network. Unfortunately, legitimate web advertising services haven’t been very discerning with the ads they allow their “customers” to upload to their networks.

Prediction video link: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ps2ylLVGyCc

As a result, criminals have paid for advertising services in order to sneak malicious code onto all the legitimate web sites that use that service. Over the past two years, this has been a very successful technique for cyber criminals to redirect innocent users browsing the web to their malicious drive-by download sites.

The good news is a number of reputation services and security products have become better at detecting malicious advertisements, and preventing your users from getting redirected to these evil sites. However, the criminals are fighting back. They have started to implement a number of techniques to obfuscate their malicious web code, including encoding their malicious JavaScript or by burying their attack in a Shockwave video file. The most recent obfuscation technique is the simplest—they serve their malicious advertisement over HTTPS.

In 2016, expect malvertising attempts to triple and for it to succeed more regularly due to its use of HTTPS. Criminals know that security products and companies are keeping on the look out for malicious ads. They also know that many security controls cannot see into HTTPS traffic. By encrypting their malvertising campaigns, they hope to bypass most detections next year. If you don’t have security controls that can monitor HTTPS, you should update as soon as you can.

Visit our WatchGuard security predictions site

— Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)

Share This:

Related

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Infosec news, Predictions, security predictions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The 443 Podcast

A weekly podcast featuring the leading white-hat hackers and security researchers. Listen Now
the 443 podcast

Threat Landscape

Filter and view Firebox Feed data by type of attack, region, country, and date range. View Now
threat landscape

Top Posts

  • Cybersecurity News: Free Cybersecurity Training, TrickBot Group Exposed, Major GoDaddy Breach, and Russia to Legalize cybercrime?!
  • US National Cybersecurity Strategy
  • Here Come The Regulations
  • Cybersecurity’s Toll on Mental Health

Email Newsletter

Sign up to get the latest security news and threat analysis delivered straight to your inbox

By signing up you agree to our Privacy Policy.


The views and opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of WatchGuard Technologies.

Stay in Touch

Recent Posts

  • Cybersecurity News: LastPass Incident Revealed, White House Issues Cybersecurity Strategy, FBI Purchases Leaked USHOR PII Data, and a Slew of Other Breaches
  • An Update on Section 230
  • Here Come The Regulations
  • US National Cybersecurity Strategy
  • Cybersecurity News: Free Cybersecurity Training, TrickBot Group Exposed, Major GoDaddy Breach, and Russia to Legalize cybercrime?!
View All

Search

Archives

Copyright © 2023 WatchGuard Technologies · Cookie Policy · Privacy Policy · Terms of Use