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MarketingVOX Snookered by Trojan Horse

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Dec 28, 2007 

Author

Sarah Novotny  |

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MarketingVOX Snookered by Trojan Horse

Reprinted from MarketingVox 

This morning MarketingVOX ran an ad campaign containing a trojan-horse-like Flash mechanism that produced a pop-up ad for a fake “performance optimizer.”

The ad campaign, which launched yesterday the 26th of December, initially tested fine — showing an ad for a multimedia technology called Sound F/X — and exhibited trojan horse behavior starting this morning.

MarketingVOX ran about 1,300 impressions of the ad early today before it was caught and terminated.

MarketingVOX trafficking staff was warned about Flash-based ruse campaigns after several incidents came to light over the past year and a half, where major publishers fell victim to spyware distribution schemes.

The trojan horse version of the ad attempted to get readers to voluntarily download a program that would allegedly scan a hard drive for spyware and other malware.

In fact, according to msmvps.com, the program reports exaggerated or fictional problems in an attempt to get people to pay for a licensed version that purportedly cleans up the issues. Symantec offers information on the specific program (and how to uninstall it).

Msmvps.com indicated that NationalGeographic.com fell victim to the same ad campaign ruse in late November.

The campaign was placed with MarketingVOX by someone representing himself as Andrew Branton from ProximoGroup.com, reportedly an interactive agency in Ontario, Canada. The domain name’s contact information, however, contains a Slovenian address.

Reprinted from MarketingVox

http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/12/27/marketingvox-snookered-by-trojan-horse/

* It is with integrity and honesty that a site or publication chooses to openly reveal and print something of this nature. It is rare and we wanted to openly applaud MarketingVox for being so honest with the industry and readers.  >ADOTAS

 

Tags: marketingvox, spyware and trojan

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