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Malware Installed by LiveJournal Ad

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:50 AM
from the egg-on-face dept.
Security The Internet
Jamesday writes "LiveJournal recently introduced an ad-supported level. Over the last few days an advertiser used an ad to install the ErrorSafe malware that tried to trick people into believing they had a fault on the computer that needs them to purchase a fix. The ad used a server-side setting and targetted only those outside the US, to prevent LiveJournal's own checks from noticing it. LiveJournal has apologized for the ad and slow response." Even our readers have had to endure more than one browser-crashing ad campaign from time to time. Thanks for sticking around.
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[+] LiveJournal Introduces "Sponsored Content" 98 comments
piphil writes, "LiveJournal.com has just announced via their Business Discussions journal that they are introducing 'sponsored communities and features.' This has lead to an outcry from those who watch this community, who accuse LiveJournal of starting down the 'slippery slope' towards placing advertising on users' journals — some of which users already pay for the privilege of not having to see ads on the site. Read more below."
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  • Breaking News (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PakProtector (115173) <cevkiv@gm a i l.com> on Saturday June 24 2006, @10:52AM (#15596421) Journal

    This just in: Capitalism and Morals do not necessarily go hand in hand.

    • I'm not sure if I agree or disagree but your post implies that there is an alternative to Capitalism that is hand in hand with positive morality. Please tell us what that is.
      • I'm not sure if I agree or disagree but your post implies that there is an alternative to Capitalism that is hand in hand with positive morality. Please tell us what that is.

        Communism. You know, communes, community, kum-bay-yah, matriarchy and all that crap.

          • Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:39AM (#15596610)
            Because stealing other people's property, censorship, and outright murder is moral.

            Don't confuse communism the theory with the dictatorships the claim to be communist. Communism as a theory disclaims most if not all personal property rights, but it has nothing to do with Murder and Censorship, any more than Capitalism has to do with monitoring bank records and tapping phone calls.

            Which doesn't mean I'm pro-communism. The problem with communism is motivation, without the acquisition of something as a goal, what motivation do people have? Who assigns people tasks? Who says the community is best served by Jon running the cash register and Joe cleaning septic tanks? Its a system that sounds great in theory but works like crap in practice

            At the same time, there's nothing terribly moral about capitalism either. In an ideal capialist society, The sick, old and infirm are left to die. The people in a capitalistic society may be moral and charitable, setting up orphanages to help stranded children, feeding and housing grandma even when she ran out of savings, but thats not Capitalism.

            • There are very few examples. (Score:4, Informative)

              by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:55AM (#15596657)
              Here is one. But because it is based upon Christ's teachings, it would be more of a Theocracy with "communism" as it's economic model.
              http://www.hutterites.org/ [hutterites.org]

              As for being "moral", as long as they do follow their religious code, they are "moral" by definition.

              Now, whether the code they follow would be considered "moral" by someone following a different code, well, that's because "morality" is subjective, not objective.

          • Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Insightful)

            by maird (699535) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:50AM (#15596638) Homepage
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism [wikipedia.org] Particularly: "communism as a political goal generally is a conjectured form of future social organization which has never been implemented" IOW, don't confuse the states that purport to be communist with communism. The USSR, China, Cuba, et al are not communist states. They are totalitarian dictatorships claiming to be communist (or that we have dubbed communist regardless of what they claimed to be). A pure communism is moral and not capitalist since there is no self-interest (selfishness) nor any need for it. There's no need to rip anyone off or take advantage of anyone. There is no need for contracts that bind the consumer to the advantage of the vendor. The truth is that communism is probably not achievable by humans, who would want to clean toilets even if you did have the same lifestyle as the head of state. Life on Star Trek starships is communist. Until matter replicators that will freely feed anyone that wants to eat are broadly available on earth communism is impossible but it is moral in ways that capitalism isn't.
            • A pure communism is moral and not capitalist since there is no self-interest (selfishness) nor any need for it.

              In other words, it runs counter to human nature. People are instinctually selfish, and it will never change.

              • Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Jacked (785403) on Saturday June 24 2006, @12:59PM (#15596936)
                People are instinctually selfish, and it will never change.

                Exactly, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is precisely because of self interest that others are willing to offer us their goods and services. One of my favorite quotes puts it much better than I can:

                "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." -- Adam Smith
              • The social and behavioral sciences should be seriously studied, not only for their intrinsic interest, but so that the student can be made quite aware of exactly how little they have to say about the problems of man and society that really matter.
                --Noam Chomsky

    • Re:Breaking News - spin (Score:5, Insightful)

      by burnin1965 (535071) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:45AM (#15596625) Homepage
      "This just in: Capitalism and Morals do not necessarily go hand in hand."

      Caveat Emptor

      Doesn't matter if its politics, economics, religion, software, hardware, or even information.

      The fact that there are people running businesses with questionable ethics in no way reflects on the morality of the underlying economic philosophy. History easily shows that people who have questionable morals have no difficulty working within the structure of any social philosophy which gains any significant following whether it be economic, religious, or governmental in nature.

      So when someone comes around selling their alternative economic philosophy based on the idea that the current system inherently lacks morality, caveat emptor.

      burnin
    • "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work to the benefit of us all."

  • Are there any humans around? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Watson Ladd (955755) on Saturday June 24 2006, @10:53AM (#15596425)
    Newspapers clear ads before printing. Radio stations clear ads before airing them, and so do tv stations. Why should websites be any different?

    • Re:Are there any humans around? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2006, @10:56AM (#15596438)
      What part of "The ad used a server-side setting and targetted only those outside the US, to prevent LiveJournal's own checks from noticing it. LiveJournal has apologized for the ad and slow response." did you not read?
        • Er, I'm just a bystander in this argument, but I believe you misread the response. The GP is saying that LiveJournal could well have cleared the ad, but that it wouldn't have mattered because they're a US-based company and the malware was designed only to download to IP's outside of the US. The point was not that the ads went through a third party server, which I agree is irrelevant, but that the ad was coded nefariously enough to appear malware-free to anyone looking at it from the US. That doesn't mean

          • I'm just a bystander too, but I beleive you're missing the GP's point.

            Do newspapers clear an ad, then send their paper off to the advertiser with blank sections in pages for the advertiser to fill in with whatever they want?

            The internet advertising industry is broken, because the advertisers have too much control, and when they abuse that like this, it is time to take that control back. Send me your flash animation, animated GIF or whatever, and I will add it to my page. You'll have to trust me on pa

    • Re:Are there any humans around? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TommydCat (791543) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:03AM (#15596472) Homepage
      Because those ads are not necessarily static or even served up by the publication's servers. If the ad consists of a "add_link_to_offsite_advertiser_server_here", anything that was "cleared" could change without notice. It's rather hard to dynamically change printed copy ;)

    • Re:Are there any humans around? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mpcooke3 (306161) * on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:11AM (#15596504) Homepage
      Heh, sometimes they do - but you'd be amazed at what goes on in the online advertising world.
      One advertising company I used to work for once had a request to configure an ad campaign to run each advert for 30seconds then switch the advert the user was viewing to a different one.

      Only later did we discover it was to bypass a websites manual safety check, where they check each advert complies with their rules by watching it for 20 seconds.

    • Re:Are there any humans around? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) (193358) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:12AM (#15596506) Homepage Journal
      They did. The ad contains code that skips the malware install if it's running in the US, as for example when it's being screened.

      A better question is why displaying an ad can install software on your computer. The LiveJournal posts say it was a Flash ad, so until we get real information it's logical to guess that it exploits one of the vulnerabilities in the Shockwave player.

  • This isn't too surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Saturday June 24 2006, @10:55AM (#15596432) Journal
    I use an ad-supported LJ account, and the mentioned advertisement was made in flash. I had to deal with it a couple of days ago. Hoo-ray for security holes. Can't we just sue the ad company for unauthorized usage of our computer's resources?

  • ads (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2006, @10:57AM (#15596446)
    Slashdot has ads? :)

  • Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)

    by BertieBaggio (944287) * on Saturday June 24 2006, @10:58AM (#15596451) Homepage

    I, for one, do not welcome our new malware-installing overlords!

  • Earlier today I searched on Google Groups and when clicking on a link in the result list I got an ad-page that crashed Seamonkey.

    It seems to be commonplace these days...
    • Oh MY GOD! Won't someone think of the Sea Monkeys?

      Seriously, people should be making use of the adblocking functionality in their browsers, or better yet, installing filtering proxies like proxo [proxomitron.info] to halt this crap before it gets to the browser.

  • I know publishers hate ad-blockers... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BertieBaggio (944287) * on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:06AM (#15596481) Homepage

    ... but they and the advertisers are the ones driving people to them.

    No seriously, is it any wonder people turn to ad-blockers? Try reading an informative bit of text when there's a Flash advertisement of box jumping around and flashing like a student at Mardi Gras. I don't care if you are trying to tell me I'm your millionth visitor. You misspelled congratulations! The box makes me wish I had no peripheral vision! FOAD.

    Now I know publishers want to make a buck (I have a few websites [sans-advertising] myself), but if the advertisers are going to use annoying/underhand methods, people will take steps to protect themselves. A lot of these companies would do well to look at the sort of program Google offers: inoffensive, targeted, text ads.

    In short: make your advertising better -- advertisers AND publishers -- or lose that which you supposedly value. Eyeballs.

    • You know, Google ads are the only ads I look at any more. (Hell, I run them on my own site!) They are short, not ugly (because Google cares [google.com] about the viewer's experience), and quite often very pertinent to the content. I have to try really hard not to puke when I log in to something like Yahoo! Mail! and I see flashing banner ads for "Get your Credit Rating" or "Cheap Mortgages" or "Warning: Your system is broadcasting an IP address! Ph33rz0r teh RFC!". They are the most useless ads ever. The only reason I think they might survive is if the ad networks charge per impression, not per click--because almost nobody would click on them!

    • In short: make your advertising better -- advertisers AND publishers -- or lose that which you supposedly value. Eyeballs.
      look, these guys piss me off just as much, and i've certainly entertained thoughts of dismemberment, but to actually threaten to remove their eyes? that's harsh, man. harsh.

  • Just one ad? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by misleb (129952) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:11AM (#15596497)
    I once played this web based role playing game a while ago. It was just a so-so game, but one exceptional thing I did notice was that while playing from a Mac I would get randomly named .exe files downloaded to my desktop. Turns out that ads on this game site were just full of malware. Visiting from a Windows computer, I was getting prompted to install crap. So I went to report it on their forums and find out what was being done about it. They didn't care! The site maintainers claimed there was nothing they could do about it. It was their ad provider's fault. All they could say was "you should be running malware protections.." Needless to say, I was outraged by this irresponsibility. I told them off and never visited their god forsaken site again.

    How can you NOT take responsibility for malware spread through your own site? I understand that people contract out ads, but geez, come on. No need to draw from the bottom of the barrel.

    -matthew
  • My simple fix for the security problems associated with Flash is to not install flash. Let's face it, 99.9% of flash is just obnoxious ads anyway. Who needs it.

    It's for this reason that any webmaster who insists on using 100% flash to view their site deserves a swift kick to the nutsack.

    • Re:simple fix (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nutria (679911) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:34AM (#15596579)
      My simple fix for the security problems associated with Flash is to not install flash. Let's face it, 99.9% of flash is just obnoxious ads anyway. Who needs it.

      It's for this reason that any webmaster who insists on using 100% flash to view their site deserves a swift kick to the nutsack.

      Google Videos, for one, are all Flash.

      Use Firefox and install Flashblock, then you'll have the benefits of both worlds.

    • Re:simple fix (Score:5, Funny)

      by vivek7006 (585218) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:55AM (#15596658) Homepage
      My simple fix for the security problems associated with Flash is to not install flash. Let's face it, 99.9% of flash is just obnoxious ads anyway

      Even better, just disconnect your computer from the internet. Who needs internet? Let's face it, 99.9% of internet is just obnoxious anyway.

  • Adverts? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Karellen (104380) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:17AM (#15596520) Homepage
    Do people still get them? I thought everyone had adblock [mozdev.org] installed.

    • Re:Adverts? (Score:4, Funny)

      by erroneous (158367) on Saturday June 24 2006, @01:07PM (#15596966) Homepage
      Heh. On my screen your message is directly below this one.

      Re:Haw! (Score:1)
      by heinousjay (683506) Alter Relationship on 18:36 24th June, 2006 (#15596823)
      I'm only here for the blowjobs. I bet our experiences are similarly disatisfying.

      Adverts? (Score:3, Insightful)
      by Karellen (104380) Alter Relationship on 17:17 24th June, 2006 (#15596520)
      Do people still get them? I thought everyone had adblock [mozdev.org] installed.

      Which became even funnier when I saw who the post was from.

  • Identify the Advertiser (Score:4, Insightful)

    by richg74 (650636) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:19AM (#15596526) Homepage
    Even our readers have had to endure more than one browser-crashing ad campaign from time to time.


    The way to discourage this kind of nonsense is to make sure that the advertisers are identified and given a large public black eye. Probably that's not appropriate if the ad just uncovered a bug in the Flash player, but I think it certainly is in the case where an ad installs spyware.

    Did the advertiser know this was going to be done? Quite possibly not, but they are still the ones responsible for the ad: they want the good consequences (more sales), so they have to take the bad ones as well. If their bottom line is hurt, they'll start paying more attention to what their ad agencies and other agents are doing. (This is just an application of Murphy's Golden Rule: the guy who has the gold makes the rules.)

  • weak effort (Score:5, Insightful)

    by v1 (525388) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:20AM (#15596533) Homepage Journal
    While it was good of them to pull the ad from the rotation immediately, they failed in several other ways:

    (1) they failed to post a notice or provide links for the removal of the malware. At best in the blog there are references that such removal instructions exist, peppered with a warning that some of them are actually malware themselves. They should have made the fix EASY and FOOLPROOF to obtain after getting their readers infected. It's been how long since they got their subscribers infected and they have done nothing more than to stop more of them from getting infected. They helped to break the computers, they should play an active roll in fixing them.

    (2) the impression I got from their posts in their blog was that "oops sorry not our fault, not our advertiser's fault, it's one of the ad companies that subscribed to our advertiser". This is a cop-out. When you provide a service like they do, your advertisement is a bundle that comes with your service, and as such you are responsible for its content. I don't care if it's a 3rd party. You take on the responsibility for the content you deliver, regardless of how you get it. You can have legal arrangements with your content providers that provide YOU with a legal remedy, but the grief passes through you. You get sued, and then you sue the ones upsteam that caused you to get sued. You do not "pass the buck" and point a finger up the chain three levels and say not my problem good luck getting anything out of them, because the consumer has no legal recourse against those people. You as the content provider do have a legal recourse against your advertiser, and they have recourse against their affiliate who caused the problem in the first place. This pass the buck mentality is cheap and lazy, and they should be ashamed for trying to pull it.
    • Actually, from their TOS:

      VI. INDEMNITY

      You agree to indemnify and hold LiveJournal, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, co-branders or other partners, and employees, harmless from any alleged claim or demand, including reasonable attorney fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your Content, your use of the Service, your connection to the Service, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another, whether you are a registered user or not. The user is s
      • As a (hypothetical) site visitor, how does simply visiting the site bind me to their terms? Also, if the malware-laden advertiser hits my machine at my first visit, before I have a chance to evaluate the TOS, there's NO way the TOS can be held to protect them.

        Moreover, if the malware violates unauthorized-access statutes, the TOS would be well and truly trumped by such legislation.

        Overall, they're in a very weak legal position; a reasonable person would conclude that the best course of action is to mitigate

  • I tried to read the apology (Score:5, Funny)

    by WebHostingGuy (825421) on Saturday June 24 2006, @11:39AM (#15596609) Homepage Journal
    But I kept getting problems with my computer while reading the ad filled apology page.

    Apparently, I needed to download some software because my computer was out of date. Thank goodness I visited LiveJournal today, which told me to update with their new UrP0wnd.exe update.

  • Cyberterrorists (Score:3, Interesting)

    by paulproteus (112149) <slashdot@a[ ]esh ... m ['she' in gap]> on Saturday June 24 2006, @12:37PM (#15596829) Homepage
    Companies like this make the Internet a frightening, dangerous place. They literally attempted to crack into people's computers without their consent.

    Why don't we sue them into the ground as pursuing cyberterrorism as a business model?

  • The solution to this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toadlife (301863) on Saturday June 24 2006, @01:52PM (#15597159) Journal
    Simple. Websites need to stop being lazy and host ads on their own servers. Yes, there would beed to be a way for the advertisers to track hits, but there should be a way to do that while keeping the potentially dangerous content off the advertisers site.

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