Microsoft is taking aim at malvertising in an effort to curb the phenomenon. The Redmond company filed five civil law suits in King County Superior Court this morning after finding that a number of online advertisers were delivering malicious code to users. In the past ReadWriteWeb has covered a number of malvertising scams including the Facebook Fan Check virus’ scareware scam. As was the case with Fan Check, the 5 companies are being accused of mimicking Windows security updates and tricking users into running fake programs.
Over the weekend, the New York Times was hacked and scareware advertisements appeared in the banner feed. Readers were warned not to click on the ad and to restart their web browsers. This influx of scareware has Microsoft livid.
Says Microsoft Associate General Counsel Tim Cranton in a recent blog post, “Although we don’t yet know the names of the specific individuals behind these acts, we are filing these cases to help uncover the people responsible and prevent them from continuing their exploits.”Those involved in the current lawsuit include Soft Solutions, Direct Ad, qiweoqw, ITmeter INC, and ote2008.
In addition to this current civil suit, Microsoft is actively pursuing actions against a number of instant messaging spammers and bot-powered click frauders. It will be interesting to see if the public education campaigns for web security can keep up with the influx of ad delivered trojan horse viruses. The public is directed to the Microsoft Online Safety page for more information.
Photo Credit: Dirk Heuer
