Lately, security experts revealed a new malvertising campaign which attacks Skype users. The campaign is usually mistaken for an accidental infection, however, it is not as harmless as it seems to be.
Malvertising is known as an operation of delivering advertising laced with malicious JavaScript code that hijacks users’ browsing experience and redirects them to a rogue Web page, where hackers employ automated software called exploit kits to scan the system for vulnerabilities and abuse them to infect the users’ computers with malware.
It seems that malvertising works in all mediums where adverts can be shown, however, practically, malvertising is only effective in browsers, due to the fact that exploit kits are often configured to exploit browser-specific issues.
For instance, in the latest a malvertising campaign, security researchers registered a spike in malicious adverts delivered to Skype users. When shown inside Skype, the campaign seemed harmless, though, the experts found out that it was delivering malicious ads to web browsers.
Usually, the malicious adverts were being shown on websites like eBay.it and were redirecting users to the Angler exploit kit, which was deploying TeslaCrypt ransomware.
In order to show the malicious adverts, hackers used the AppNexus ad platform, however, the security researchers said the malvertising campaign was short-lived, due to the fact that criminals noticed their blunder and shut it down to reconfigure their attack.
According to the statistics, this is not the first time when malicious adverts were delivered to Skype. There were similar campaigns in 2014 and 2015.
