Users of Anti-Adblocker Firm PageFair Hit by Malware Attacks

Digiday.com reported on 2nd November, 2015, stating that anti-blocking firm PageFair, which works with some 3,000 publishers was recently hacked causing visitors of more than 500 publisher's websites vulnerable to malware attacks.

The compromise began when the Halloween was about to conclude with a spear-phishing e-mail, which ultimately gave the cybercriminals accessibility to the content distribution network account of PageFair.

The crooks then reset the password and changed the JavaScript (JS) code PageFair generally had executed on subscriber sites. For almost one hour and thirty minutes after that, users who visited 501 anonymous sites got popup windows instructing them that their Adobe Flash version was indeed outdated, and instructed them malware installation concealed as an authorized update.

Arstechnica.com published news on 3rd November, 2015, quoting a blog of Sean Blanchfield, CEO of PageFair, as "If you are a publisher employing our free analytics service, you have fair reason to be very annoyed and dissatisfied with us right now".

Pcworld.com published news on 2nd November, 2015, stating that Sean observed an analysis of the malicious code delivered indicated that the majority of antivirus programs wouldn't have detected it at the time of attacks.

It is a sarcastic twist keeping in view that PageFair's services help publishers to fight ad blocking, and ensure that they get paid for their content. PageFair released a report in August wherein it valued the loss incurred online ad revenue for 2015 at just under 14 Billion Pound ($22 Billion) globally.

Spokesperson of PageFair said that it can't disclose the list of affected publishers as most of them were fairly small. Just under two-thirds (60%) of them had less than one million monthly pageviews, and 90% of them had less than 10 million monthly pageviews.

However, the company emphasized that all publishers are important to it irrespective of size, and currently, it is working to estimate the degree to which visitors to all the targeted websites would have been affected by the attack.

Meanwhile, some media experts have said that the attack was bound to happen. The kind of service offered by the company makes them an appealing target to those who see it as their right to block ads and not be traced online.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/6/2015