Be careful while on Yahoo. Reports claim malicious parties have hacked into two Yahoo advertising servers and infected them with malware. So far, the malware has hit hundreds of thousands of Yahoo users.
According to a Dutch computer security firm called Fox IT, the malware attacks have been going on since December 30, 2013, at the latest. One security advisor believes the malware distributers are hacking into existing ad networks and are exploiting weaknesses in Java. Since December 30, the malware units are believed to be delivered at around 300,000 per hour, with infections topping at 27,000 an hour. They don’t know who is responsible for these attacks, but it appears the motive is financial. A Yahoo spokesperson addressed the threat saying, “At Yahoo, we take the safety and privacy of our users seriously. We immediately removed [the malware] and will continue to monitor and block any ads being used for this activity.” In recent days, the malware activity has decreased significantly.
But recently, Java has been losing a lot of credibility, because of this and other episodes. It’s becoming a hacker’s paradise. Some experts say you should disable Java altogether. You should also take simple precautions to be safe. Change your passwords often and come up with difficult ones. Be careful about where you do online debit/credit card transactions. ?And if any ad anywhere sounds too good to be true, avoid it like the plague. What are some other ways you can keep your system malware proof?