Malicious Ads Show Up On Google

We've been saying it for close to a year now and it's finally been seen on the holy grail of search engines, Google. Google allowed a scam ad to appear briefly atop search results on Tuesday for the term "Firefox."

The sponsored link purported to take Google (NSDQ: GOOG) searchers to the official Firefox Web site, but in fact took them to a different domain, firefox.mozilla-now.com, according to Sophos, a computer security company.

For months we have been trying to educate the public on how all of the malware and spyware are being spread through malicious ads placed on web pages. Now, it's finally being brought to light how many legitmate web sites are running these infected ads! It was brought to light that malicious ads have also been spotted this year at nytimes.com. eweek.com, mlb.com, and foxnews.com, among other Web sites and such incidents are becoming more common.

The way it works: you visit a legitimate web site which, in most cases today, displays advertisements. In most cases those advertisements net the site owner a profit when they are clicked on in however those clicks take you to another web site. This is being used to perpetuate the spread of the infamous Antivirus Malware/spyware. When you click on the ad, boom! Your computer becomes infected.

The other way it can work is this: the legitimate web sites rotate the ads so as to get more $$$ from advertisers. You may visit the web site 50 times and see a different ad every time. All it takes is one visit to that page when a malicious ad is in the rotation. As soon as the web page loads, BOOM! What is called in iframe opens and infects your computer. In most cases the visitor never see's the iframe (in layman's terms it's another web page which is designed to open on its own) or you may see it flash so fast that you barely see it.

ScanSafe, a security company, said on Wednesday that a large scale malvertising attack had hit popular Web sites, including drudgereport.com, horoscope.com and lyrics.com, over the weekend.

Folks, we've been saying it for MONTHS...........