Google survey finds more than five million users infected with adware

[SweX 871]

Ad-injecting malware is one of the most reliable scams on the web. Once a computer's infected, the virus will drop new ads into any site it visits, sending ad revenue back to the scammers who control it. Users may even know the name of the program, but they're powerless to remove it. According to new research from Google and UC Berkley, the scam is still going strong, despite more than a decade of work to stamp it out.

 

Released today, the study looked at computers visiting Google sites from June to October of 2014, replaying network requests to see if bogus ads were being injected locally. Over those five months, the system detected 5,339,913 different IP addresses infected with adware, roughly 5.5 percent the total requests. It's a staggering number, but if anything it's likely to be an underestimate, since adware programs often decline to tamper with large company sites so as to avoid detection.

 

hxxp://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8557843/google-adware-survey-ad-injectors-security-malware

Edited May 6, 2015 by SweX