Blue Coat identifies new malvertising attack
2014-08-08Blue Coat Systems has uncovered a malvertising attack that is leveraging major legitimate ad networks to drive a CryptoWall Ransomware campaign. In malvertising attacks, cybercriminals gain legitimacy for their ad servers within ad networks and then serve malicious ads to high-profile sites. The ads appear legitimate but deliver malware or other unwanted software to the unsuspecting user.
“What looked like a minor malvertising attack quickly became more significant as the cybercriminals were successfully able to gain the trust of the major ad networks. The interconnected nature of ad servers and the ease with which would-be-attackers can build trust to deliver malicious ads points to a broken security model that leaves users exposed to the types of ransomware and other malware that can steal personal, financial and credential information,” said Chris Larsen, Architect of the WebPulse Threat Research Team for Blue Coat Systems.
Over a period of several weeks, Blue Coat security researchers tracked malicious traffic associated with the CryptoWall ransomware campaign. CryptoWall is a Trojan that encrypts various document file types and demands a financial payment for their safe return. During the research team’s investigation of the origination of the traffic coming to the malicious sites, it identified a series of referring websites in countries such as India, Myanmar, Indonesia and France.
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