New York Times Malware: Bad Ad On NYTimes.com

AllThingsD:

Here's a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.

The paper says "some readers" have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead.

Read the whole story: AllThingsD

Comments

[mratcheson]

It happened to me yesterday morning, when I clicked on a NYT article from Huffington Post. I seem to have shut down my browser fast enough to avoid infection...I hope.

[Bradson]

The Avast ! anti-virus program (I'm running XP 64-bit) detected the problem immediately and allowed me to delete it. I've been using this product for two years and have found it to be very reliable.

[stayleft]

Even worse Malware on the same front page "Public Option Fades From Debate". Why? I still see it being mentioned everywhere everyday (thankfully).

[Fabini]

This happened to me yesterday as I was reading an article on the economy. As a Macintosh user, this rarely happens. I was very surprised. I have seen no after affects.

[ZKMC]

it happened to me when HuffPo was directing people to the New York Times earlier instead of AllThingsD - I opened my iPhone HuffPo App clicked and read the opener, then clicked on the NY Times link that was previously here and a pop up thing came up and when you're on your iPhone those things take over the whole screen and you have to click it to make it go away. It asked "cancel or proceed" so I hit cancel and it took me to a weird page with some sort of countdown (lots of numbers and letters). So, I clicked out of there and restarted my iPhone. No issues yet. *knocks on wood*

Wish HuffPo hadn't of linked there!

[CynAnne]

If I may, let me recommend a combination of the "Webroot Anti-Virus" and "Norton Security Scan" programs - I have both installed, and between them, and my preference for the Firefox browser (far less exploitation of their browser system than the IE), I very rarely have those nasty little critters hopping about on my desktop..! ;) ...

[Bademus]

I was reading the opinion piece Frank Rich wrote today on nyt and when I clicked to go to page 2 the link attempted to hijack my browser. My Trend Micro caught it and popped up a warning. It was attempting to redirect me to a sex-in-the-city.cn or something similar so I closed out. Good to know my malware detection is working. I'm surprised such a mainstream site got exploited.

[groosemoose]

Affiliates make deals with them. They get 90% commission on all profits the malware company makes. They'll run legit ads most of the time, an per agreement with malware distributor, run a malware trigger some of the time. It's a very, very profitable scheme. It's the affiliates' responsibility, not the NYT's.

[Joan1111]

Mac users -- check your download file. This happened to me too, several times. Even though I never clicked on anything to download, I found a file in the download file called scanner_..­.(somethin­g)_.exe. Delete it!

[Jeffer]

Happened to my wife the other day. AVG shut it down.
We have AVG as well as we don't visit a lot of "unsafe" sites. Glad to see it handles things such as this.

[groosemoose]

Strange. Our AVG never shuts it down.

[kid5rivers2]

MSM...Malware Serving Media.

[radiojunkie]

The same thing has happened to me here. Maybe it was a link to the times but I don't remember

[JimBozo]

Village Voice, also, this evening. Fortunately, I hit the power switch before it could finish its self-installation.

[gbrooks]

That happened to me today when I was attempting to read the NYT.

[horsey]

you'll get malware on the NY Post also......i did about a week ago.

[jeffrey678]

A free program called Sandboxie isolates your computer from everything, just click delete and every thing is gone. A website called Gizmo freeware has simple instructions and ratings of freeware and excellent articles on protecting your computer with free programs.