Google has blocked malicious web attacks originating from a dangerous ad network . The move is the result of security analysis by the company, which identified the advertising platform, Zedo, which served pop-up ads that attempted to infect visitors' computers on major websites .
In the attack that ended early Friday morning, visitors of Last.fm, The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post were put at risk of infecting their computers as Zedo redirected visitors to malicious servers. As Jerome Segura, senior security researcher at Malwarebytes Labs, notes, because the ads hosted on Zedo's servers were distributed via Google's Doubleclick, the attack has reached millions of potential victims.
The distribution of malware through legitimate advertising networks, is a technique known as “malvertising,” which is becoming an increasingly popular way to put the systems of users and employees at risk. “We see malvertising daily, but it usually affects areas with lower traffic,” said Segura.
