A lot of folks in the business (and consumer) world are shaking in their boots about ransomware. It’s understandable. Ransomware is a dangerous threat and, if not protected against, can do serious damage to a company’s data, reputation, and bottom line.
But the truly alarming part is that ransomware is being delivered by malvertising. Malvertising can do this without you knowing (until it’s too late) and without your users taking a single “unsafe” action online. And even mainstream websites are being infected by malvertising—blacklisting dodgy domains doesn’t solve the problem for you or your users.
So malvertising and ransomware. A match made in hell. Let’s take a closer look at the destruction left in their wake and what businesses can do to protect against them.
Click here for the full PDF version.
I have a file from askbar showing up when I run hitman . is that malware.
It may be harsh, but online advertising needs a total revamp.
Some guidelines to get a feel for improving the adspace and cleaning up the Net.
(I’m open to suggestions)
1. Anyone buying adspace must be identifiable and liable for their advertising content.
2. The penalties for running malicious ads must be painfully high per infection ($50,000)
3. The ad-buyer must prove the ad doesn’t have malware.
4. If either party tries to bait and switch legit for malicious, the penalties double and #5 applies.
5. Ad providers found serving malware are banned from the internet, all assets liquidated, and owners blacklisted for life from participating or contributing in any future digital/print ad companies.
6. If it was a hack on the ad-server that was known to be good, the penalties would usually be levied against the company for failing to keep their systems secure.
Either run good ads or destroy your ad-company, take your pick.
Instead of using a “cloud” service, just put your most valuable and/or irreplaceable files on a thumb drive or two. Unless you’re worried about a house fire.
Also, use Firefox and set it to delete cookies every time you close the browser, and set to ask you if you want to enable Flash or other plug-ins on websites that call for one. Explorer does not give you these options.
Ad blockers (free) increase security, especially on news sites.
Get CCleaner (free) which will find and remove cookies that Firefox may have missed. (its also great for general cleanup of unnecessary temp files and the like)
lol you are really going to recommend a physical thumb drive over a cloud solution? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had physical media fail. Cloud is the safest best. From a disaster planning perspective, a house fire, flood, tornado…you name it are all options and do you EVER see them coming? No. Play it safe, put it in the cloud and relax easy.