Hackers have launched ad campaigns in advertising networks of Google and Microsoft

This week, hackers managed to launch extensive “advertising” campaigns in the advertising networks of Google and Microsoft. In quotes, the word "advertising" is taken because, for obvious reasons, hackers did not advertise real things or services. Instead, users were lured by attractive slogans, but by accessing the site via a link, the user did not receive anything other than malicious software for his PC. The launch of the hacker campaigns took place on the fifth of December, advertising was displayed for several days.

On Friday, Google representatives acknowledged the fact of launching a literal viral advertising campaign, claiming that the remedies worked quickly, and advertisements leading to hacking sites ceased to exist. Google even called for the help of specialists from Armorize, who were able to figure out how hackers were able to start working with the Google advertising network. As it turned out, the hackers were able to do this because they used the domains of a legitimate company, AdShuffle, which has long been working with the Google advertising network.
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Experts from Armorize were also able to determine that the hackers work with the Microsoft advertising network worked in a similar way. Microsoft on Friday gave an official comment that they were going to investigate this matter seriously.

Experts report that malicious sites were hosted on malicious sites, exploiting vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader, Java and other installed software of client PCs.

At present, experts say, advertising campaigns launched by hackers have already been stopped, and there is no danger. It is worth noting that this is not the first case of a similar scheme of work of hackers. Last year, for example, the fake VoIP application was advertised on the New York Times website, which, of course, couldn’t do anything except download malware onto a client computer. This time, hackers managed to run a much larger company through Google and Microsoft ad networks, and even the approximate number of infected PCs is still unknown.

Via yahoo