Nasty Porn Ad Taints Moscow Times

For about a week, at least two ads in the online version of the English-language Russian newspaper have been compromised and now are serving up malicious software to readers.

“A nasty porn advert was injected in the page,” Maltwarebytes reports.  

Several people began reporting that Google Safe Browsing issued a malware alert whenever they visited The Moscow Times website.

In response, the paper released a statement on Facebook telling users to ignore the warnings, which the paper described as a coding error.

“Unfortunately, it turns out that there was indeed a real malware problem,” Malwarebytes says. “What was called a ‘coding error in our banners’ turns out to be malicious ads (malvertising?) redirecting visitors to an exploit kit landing page.”

Researchers identified the hacker tool as a Java exploit.

As of Jan. 7, the site was still pushing malware onto its visitors.

“Perhaps the people in charge thought this was a mistake on Google’s part," Malwarebytes reports. “It is unfortunate that poor advice was given on the company’s official Facebook page. The browser warnings are there for a reason and when in doubt it is better to err on the side of caution.

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.