Last Monday, the NetSeer ad network was compromised by hackers who filled it with malware. The hackers only compromised third-party sites hosted on the company's website netseer.com, but that was enough for Google to add the entire network to its list of malicious websites.
Despite the fact that they share the same domain, the website that serves the ads is different from the corporate website.
In his statement, John Mracek, the CEO of NetSeer, explained that the malware uploaded by the hackers did not essentially affect the system. Nevertheless, Google's Chrome browser warned users that the website is infected with malware solely because the system shares the same domain name as the corporate website.
NetSeer technicians rushed to remove the malicious software from their systems and contacted Google to have it removed from the list of malware-infected areas. The company is currently working on discovering where the attack originated from.
“We deeply regret this situation and want to emphasize once again that the 3rd party hosting the corporate website was hit. No malicious software is being distributed and our partners will not be affected,” said Mracek.
“We are currently conducting a root-cause analysis of the security of the hosting infrastructure for our supplier's corporate websites and will take all appropriate measures to ensure that incidents of this kind do not affect us or our partners in the future.”
Between the domains that are blocked by browsers due to Google's list are also truly big names such as: The Huffington Post, The Street, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, ZDNet, Boston.com and The New York Times.
On Monday, the newspaper The Guardian posted the following warning on Twitter: “Hello, Chrome users. We are aware that some of you have seen warnings for malware in Guardian articles. Please ignore them, No danger”.
