Beware malicious adverts on YouTube, Amazon and Yahoo, Cisco warns
Adverts popping up on YouTube, Amazon and Yahoo that redirect users to different websites are causing malware, researchers as Cisco have warned.
The malicious ads, which are being served on 74 domains according to threat researcher Armin Pelkmann, trigger a download based on whether the computer is running Windows or Apple’s OS X.
When a user is redirected to a website by one of the ads, their computer will download a piece of malware with a unique checksum, which makes it harder for security software to detect.
Pelkmann said: “The attackers are purely relying on social engineering techniques in order to get the user to install the software package. No drive-by exploits are being used thus far.”
Nicknamed the “Kyle and Stan” network, since those names appeared in the subdomain that the attackers have set up to distribute the malware, Cisco first detected issues in May.