Avoid being infected by malvertising Do you know how to protect yourself?

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We are in a world where security is one of the pillars that we must always keep in mind and be aware of every moment since the attackers every minute are developing new techniques to find vulnerabilities and steal information or perform their malicious activities.

We have seen how the attacks have increased and one of them is malvertising and that is why today Solvetic will make a detailed analysis of this new threat and we will see how it can affect us if we do not take the necessary protection measures.

What is malvertising?

Malvertising (malicious advertising) is one of the activities that we do daily on both desktop and mobile computers is to browse hundreds of websites and something we have noticed frequently is the increase of annoying ads when accessing these sites, but beyond To see hundreds of ads there is something more critical with these ads and it is that these can be distributors of malware too, this is known as malvertising or malicious advertising, which is nothing more than a way to bring malicious software to computers.

The real problem with malicious advertising is not the ads as such, the problem is that it is a vulnerable software that applies to the system which could be compromised by just clicking on a link to a malicious website. Even if all the ads disappeared from the web, the central problem would remain.

Malvertising is a way to link an original-looking ad with malicious code inside, there we can find a code execution that talks to a malicious server and downloads malware to the victim's computer or one that redirects the user to a website infected, as proof of this, the Equifax website was attacked by a malicious attack, which redirected people’s browsers to a fake Flash installation page loaded with malware, many of whom fell into that trap.

Perhaps one of the questions that arises is, why an attack with advertising ?, simple, advertising on websites can be seen by hundreds or thousands of people in a short time, reason more than enough to succeed in their attack.

Malvertising operation
There are two main ways in which attackers look for ways to compromise our system, these are:

  • The first is to try to trick us into downloading and executing malicious codes.
  • The second is to directly attack the web browser and related software such as the Adobe Flash plug-in, the Oracle Java plug-in and the Adobe PDF reader. These attacks make use of security holes in the software to force our computer to download and run malicious software.
If our operating system is vulnerable, either because an attacker knows a new "zero day" vulnerability for the software or because no security patches have been installed, simply visiting a web page with malicious code makes it easier for the attacker to compromise and infect the system. . This often takes the form of a malicious Flash object from a Java applet, and by clicking on a link to a hidden website which could be infected.

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How to protect ourselves from malvertising
The ads have been developed to help free web services grow and develop, which is why they are everywhere, from potential sites like YouTube to small blogs that try to earn additional revenue. This makes the case of addressing malvertisements quite complicated.

Ads are a great source of revenue for sites, but as soon as a malicious site enters the environment, it can damage the trust of its users.

There are several options to prevent this type of attack and increase security, these options are:

Visit reliable sites

This is perhaps the most prudent advice we should take, since we currently find hundreds of websites and due to ignorance we often access low reputation sites putting all the integrity of our information at risk.

It is advisable to visit websites that have the HTPPS secure protocol as this guarantees the integrity of the site.

Keep our systems always updated

It is another vital point to avoid being victims of malvertising, keeping everything updated, from operating system updates to web browsers, will make all security patches that have been released are applied on our computer and thus we will close attack gaps.

Make use of ad blockers

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There are a number of add-ons for web browsers that are responsible for blocking all the ads that are displayed on the websites, in this way we will automatically be adding more levels of security in the browser.
One of the most used today is AdBlock which we can download at the following link:

Google Chrome AdBlock
AdBlock Mozilla Firefox

AdBlock Microsoft Edge

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Update add-ons

As we have indicated previously, keeping all the elements of the operating system updated helps us reduce the chances of an attack.
When using add-ons such as Java or Flash it is ideal to periodically check for updates for these. If we use Google Chrome we can enter the line chrome: // components in the address bar and there update all available add-ons:

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Read in detail the permissions requested by the plugins or plugins before installing them

It is not a good idea to accept everything they propose without reading it before, so we must take some time and analyze each condition associated with a complement.

Make use of anti-exploits malware

This software does not work as an antivirus does because anti-exploit malware monitors the web browser and observes the techniques used by the exploits to carry out their attack.

In this case we can use MalwareBytes Anti-exploit which is free and available in the following link.

antiexploit

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Disable or uninstall add-ons that we do not use frequently

By avoiding the use of add-on, we will reduce the attack surface and thus attackers will be given less vulnerable software to the target. It is ideal to remember that many vulnerable add-ons such as java or Silverlight are not used today because websites make use of HTML5.

With these tips we can avoid being a victim of malvertising and keep our complete data.