Computer security risks were discovered on a popular, highly trafficked pornographic website in the United States.
These risks are due to a malvertising, which leverages Flash Player, with the aim of exploiting computer systems that do not have the latest version of the application.
Security researchers have found evidence of system infections originating from xhamster[.]com, reporting a 1,500% increase in attacks in recent times. The security firm that discovered the issue did not want to disclose the exact number of infections it recorded.
However, we can assume that a fairly large number of visitors to the page have been infected, given that it is quite popular, with a global ranking of 64 and 100 in the United States, according to Alexa. Furthermore, it is estimated that more than 500 million users visit the page on a monthly basis.
After extensive analysis, researchers revealed that the attack was a drive-by download. Malwarebytes says the attackers used a simpler method, incorporating a new landing page and script, which were hosted on a compromised ad network.
[alert variation=”alert-info”]Researchers report that Flash scripts that exploit vulnerable systems go unnoticed by antivirus engines, according to VirusTotal results.[/alert]
At the time of its discovery, the security issue affected all versions of Flash Player prior to version 16.0.0.296, which runs on any version of the Windows operating system and with any version of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome was not affected at all.
Malvertising attacks are common, especially on pornographic websites, due to the large number of visitors they attract on a daily basis. However, this particular campaign, according to researchers, is very dangerous and spreads quite quickly. For this reason, they urge all users to immediately install the new security updates for Flash, Internet Explorer and Chrome, which were released earlier this week.
