HACKERS TAKE AIM AT AD-SERVER NETWORKS

摘要

As if phishing scams, spam, and run-of-the-mill virus attacks weren't doing enough to whittle away at the level of trust in E-business systems, hackers last week added a new target: banner advertising networks. On Nov. 20, attackers infiltrated the ad-server network of German Internet marketing company Falk eSolutions AG. They compromised one of the company's servers, inserting code that caused some Web surfers who visited sites displaying Falk's banner ads to become infected by a Trojan horse located on other Web sites that opens their systems to attack. The hackers took advan- tage of a known but unpatched flaw in Internet Explorer 6.0, and Web surfers running that browser didn't have to click on the banner ad to get infected, says Joe Stewart, senior security researcher for security services firm LURHQ Corp. Systems running Internet Explorer 6.0 on Service Pack 2 aren't vulnerable.