Mac malware that steals passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data has been spotted circulating through Google ads, making it at least the second time in as many months the widely used ad platform has been abused to infect web surfers.
Like most other large advertising networks, Google Ads regularly serves malicious content that isn’t taken down until third parties have notified the company. Google Ads takes no responsibility for any damage that may result from these oversights. The company said in an email it removes malicious ads once it learns of them and suspends the advertiser and has done so in this case.
People who want to install software advertised online should seek out the official download site rather than relying on the site linked in the ad. They should also be wary of any instructions that direct Mac users to install apps through the right-click method mentioned earlier. The Malwarebytes post provides indicators of compromise people can use to determine if they’ve been targeted.
all the more reason to use an adblocker… and a script blocker if you don’t mind the extra clicks to get a whitelist going or to temporarily allow them somewhere.
Way too many people still don’t understand that this is an essential part of the security equation. Many sites execute 10+ scripts, many of which are doing who the fuck knows what, and said sites typically only need like 1 to 3ish allowed to function.
Sure it’s inconvenient compared to not doing anything, but it’s mostly front loaded inconvenience. Once you get things dialed in for frequently used sites, and learn to tell at a glance what needs to be allowed, its really not much hassle at all tbh.
May I ask you what script blocker I should use? I use Firefox with ublock.
NoScript
Are there shared whitelists? It seems like something that isn’t really practical without them. I’m a web developer who has never served one ad but the front-end tools now basically export all JavaScript. You’d probably just get a blank page on any site made recently that’s more complex than a portfolio/resume page.
Larger sites cater towards scriptless web for accessibility requirements.
Smaller sites don’t need SPA, so will most likely work to some degree.
The better (not necessarily bigger) blog systems will use scripting for fancy things, but will have fallbacks and will still work.
It’s the middle tier web-app (and sites that want to be a web app but have no reason to be) that will run SPA without any fallback. You know, the ones that want to send notifications and know your location and all that fun stuff.
The person you’re explaining websites to is a web developer and they are correct. There being a ton of websites needlessly dependent on JavaScript is well known and long lived.