Privacy Digest

An experiment in using sponsored ads for malware: "

After last month’s excitement with the sponsored ads on Google being used to steal bank passwords, a security researcher named Didier Stevens discussed an experiment he’d been running, to see how much traffic he could get using this same sort of tactic, with sort of a reverse social-engineering tactic: He set up an ad that promised to infect your computer upon clicking the link.

In this case, the site was actually harmless, but over 400 people did in fact click the link. My guess is that there was probably a lot of curiosity about what an actual virus infection ‘looks’ like. I also wonder what percentage were clicks from people using browsers or OSes they consider to be immune to such things - I suspect a notable number. Something akin to people driving less cautiously around bicyclists who wear helmets, since they consider those bikers to be better protected.

(Read Original Article - Via McAfee Avert Labs.)