Gizmodo displays bad banner ads

The Gizmodo technology and gadget blog, Gawker Media's largest blog, has been the victim of an attack that embedded malicious code in the sites advertising, where it would be downloaded by users and could be executed on their machines. According to Brian Lam of Gizmodo, the Suzuki ads which were displayed last week contained malware and made it past the sites ad sales team through an "elaborate scam". The problem has reportedly been fixed and should have affected "only a few people".

Lam says that his team would have noticed it sooner, however, everyone on staff uses Mac OS X or Linux on their production machines, neither of which were susceptible to the malware. Users running Windows that have visited the site recently are advised to make sure that they have an up-to-date anti-virus program installed and to scan for "qegasysguard.exe" should they experience random pop-ups.

According to a blog post by Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant for Sophos, the technology blog has an average of 3.1 million page views per day. Gizmodo isn't the only popular site to have been affected by malicious banner ads lately. The New York Times, for example, recently fell victim to a similar attack last month when criminal elements succeeded in inserting poisoned banner ads into the newspaper's advertising network.

See also:

• New York Times shows bad banner ad, a report from The H.
• New Google service helps find dodgy advertisers, a report from The H.
• Malicious advertising banners distributed by eWeek, a report from The H.
• Malicious ad banners on popular websites, a report from The H.

(crve)