Cyber-criminals Hijack Company Website of ad Firm

On February 4, 2013, a few extremely popular websites couldn't be accessed through Google's Chrome and other browsers because the corporate website of an ad company had been contaminated with malware. However, the chief executive officer of the advertising network said that the affected websites were safe.

Actually, visitors that tried to reach the sites -New York Times, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times along with several other media portals, confronted an alert that stated malware existed on the accessed sites. One alert said, for instance, that content from one familiar site namely cm.netseer.com that distributed malware had been injected inside the web-page being accessed. Therefore browsing it might infect the user's PC with malicious software. Yet one more alert said that virus could be inserted from the peddler, images.buddytv.com.

It turned out that the culprit within both the instances was a startup company called Netseer based in Santa Clara, California which provided plentiful advertisements worldwide over the Internet.

The incident started 4th February 2013, 8:30 in the morning EST whilst hackers hijacked Netseer's website and used it for pushing malware onto visitors' computers, the organization stated. Soon after, Google banned users from visiting the site.

Netseer hurriedly cleansed its systems off the malware as also asked Google not to any longer blacklist them as malware-infected websites. And while it can't be definitely said about the source responsible for the attack, Netseer is investigating into the incident.

According to the company, its operations team had worked diligently and effectively cleansed the website. Further, it was collaborating with Google for conducting a speedy examination of the website as well as taking it off the list of sites designated as malware-infected in order that all users could restore their browsing activities.

Netseer started informing its associates, suggesting they eliminate intermediary matters diverting their site-visitors onto the netseer.com URL. Eventually, Google searches didn't anymore label Netseer results as malicious with the alert "This-site-may-harm-your-computer." However, the "routers" mechanism which routinely make their blacklists up-to-date with the help of the Safe Browsing List of Google, may keep labeling the website as well as its associates -'malicious'.

Related article: Cyber Attackers Move To Abandoned Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 2/11/2013