I have written before about how a typical scam works (both surface level and technically) using an eBay auction. While victims of these scams are obviously affected, the damage is not widespread (save future victims the scammers are motivated to go after). On the other hand, malware which spreads via infected advertising networks have the ability to infect anyone who visits the effected site. But how do infected ad networks make it onto a host site? The short answer is scammers (surprise, surprise).
For an in-depth look at how one such advertising scam works, take a look at this article which is the case study for one targeted site. After reading it, you can see how sophisticated some scams are at surface level (fake references, etc.), but ultimately there are always going to be things that don’t add up. The author breaks down exactly how they flagged the scam and determined this was indeed an attempted attack on their site. Overall, I thought this was a very informative read and educated me a lot on how some of these scams reach the light of day.
The bottom line when dealing with any situation you think may be a scam is to just use your head. As always, if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.
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Thanks Jason for giving a little insight into the mind of “the enemy”. Scammers, online or in the real world, are devious, conniving crooks that deserve a special place in hell.
My wife recently visited a dictionary site and got a horrendous spoof ad about a virus being found. Not knowing what she was doing, she clicked on it, thereby inviting a whole wave of crapware and spyware onto the machine. It hijacked it, not allowing me to run anything. It turned the machine itself into its own proxy, thereby not allowing me out to the Internet.
It took me a better part of a day to undo the damage.
Really annoying what these guys do.
David, I have 2 questions: Was that a Mac (did your wife make the switch when you did)? And did Malwarebytes remove the bug, or was it something really bad? I hadn't had a problem in a long time, and got a similar bug, and didn't have a way to remove it. I had to use a flash drive to get MWB on the machine, and that took care of it. The next day I installed MWB on every other PC I use (home and work), because once you need it, MWB can be hard to get.
It took me a better part of the day to undo the damage. Thanks for giving information.
http://www.mcaads.com/