Windows 10: Flash bites again: Huge malware campaign on Yahoo ads hits millions

Source

 

Another good reason to ban Internet advertising (and Flash).

"Old Media" should lobby the Government; "No one has ever caught PC malware from a newspaper ad."

:)

 

JS/Flafisi.D & Malwarebytes

Using System Restore will most likely just give your system hiccups (or worse) and won’t have any effect on the recurrence of this fake Adobe Flash Player update. From what we understand, the problem isn't that this threat hasn't been removed, it's
that it's being delivered again every time a compromised domain connects to the host site. So the only remedy; short of finding a new homepage, or a new browser; is to use an ad-blocker to prevent the malware-ridden domain from connecting.

[Edit for update]

We’ve now identified the source of this fake Adobe Flash Player update as the
Kovter Group malvertising campaign. Here’s the explanation:



Kovter Group malvertising campaign exposes millions to potential malware and fraud

[end Edit]

Install the uBlock Origen extension for Edge, and then run it with its default settings:

Settings and more > Extensions > Get extensions from the store

uBlock Origin documentation:

gorhill/uBlock

But also run some of these third-party malware-removal apps in order to make sure that you don’t have some other kind of malware running in the background:

List of Malware Removal Tools

 

On Windows 10 I cannot permanently get rid of a Trojan called: JS/Flafisi.D

We’ve now identified the source of this fake Adobe Flash Player update (Trojan:JS/Flafisi.D) as the
Kovter Group malvertising campaign. Here’s the scoop:

Kovter Group malvertising campaign exposes millions to potential malware and fraud

I also discovered today that while Windows Defender detects and "quarantines" this threat, the FlashPlayer.hta file will still be downloaded from this page without being intercepted if you click on the “Save" button; and could potentially be
executed by clicking on the "Run” button – so please be careful with this one:

 

I could agree with Flash but Internet advertising is how John and others pay for sites like this one.

 

I have no real objection to static ads (they could use gifs just like in the "Good Old Days").

 

+1.. add flash to anything can be problematic at best.

 

Hi there

Actually not quite true -- well you can't get PC malware but you most certainly can get Scammed -- people have often replied via Newspaper ads to "Scams" etc -- in particular - "Ponzi Schemes" and Investment Boiler House schemes. There are all sorts of other Scams one could get lured into via a newspaper Ad. What about "Timeshares" on non existent properties etc etc.


Scams have been around since Man ever started trading -- it's just that it's probably easier to become a "Scamee" (i.e a Victim) much quicker using the Internet than by using other conventional ways of advertising.

The only way you could stop Scams is to ban TRADING of any sort -- That's just not going to happen.

Education is the only answer :

Remember "The Price of Education is expensive -- but the price of Ignorance is Astronomical". I don't know who first said that but it's even truer today than probably when that phrase was first coined.

I do agree though Non Static ads are HUGELY irritating -- I can live with some STATIC advertising on sites -- things do have to be paid for - but irritating the customer seems the wrong way to go about it - especially as it leads to POORER security too.

Cheers
jimbo

 

For very long time now I have Flash set to ask to initialize and don't have no Flash based live adds but at most leave black holes on screen. Wander if any of adds are made in HTML5 ?

 

Three programs that I keep off my computers are Adobe Acrobat, Java and Adobe Flash. Prevents a lot of problems.

 

How do you tell if your infected or not? The way I back-up recently may have saved me. However, I may need to re-do a clean install of 10 and delete the backup image of windows 10. Firefox defaults to yahoo for search results.

 

There's no guarantee that you will be infected, odds of getting infected are not great. Some unusual activity may suggest infection but there are many other more dangerous things. Malwarebytes and others like that can detect and clean, I also use Advanced cleaner and Avast Browser Cleanup.
FF can be set to use Google and other search engines by default.

 

Something to worry about with clean installs now, malware can't write to a clean DVD copy of the Windows installer, but it can to a USB flash drive (unless it has some kind of write protection).

 

Not the way I do things. I am currently scanning images from a clean windows 7 with Malwarebytes.

 

+1 I do the same *Wink