Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Thursday 23 October 2008, 6:11 PM
A close shave with cunning malware
Our advertising team - fine men and women all, and I'm not just saying that because of their role in my drinks bill - forwarded me a fascinating note.
It seems that a bad person had faked himself a convincing identity as a media buyer in Denmark. For those of you lucky enough not to know, media buyers are strange intermediary lifeforms who cut deals with media outlets for advertisers. They can be... challenging to deal with.
This one, however, had a straightforward proposition. He wanted to book adverts for Gillette, which has a big campaign for Fusion/Venus razors going on now. He seemed to check out - his email and ad server domains were very well faked, looking just like those of a genuine agency, and you don't need much persuasion to get ad sales to sell ad space.
Indeed, his adverts were perfectly normal - at first. But his plan was to switch these to spyware/malware bearing versions after a short delay, thus neatly embedding nastiness in perfectly proper publications.
The good news is that his foul scheme has been thwarted, with the community of ad sales bods now thoroughly alerted and all the offending fake campaigns removed. The better news is that you really, really don't want to get on the wrong side of ad sales, who take this all very personally - so anyone else trying it on will find the market a lot harder to fool. Personally, I wouldn't recommend the experiment. These people are best kept sweet...
It seems that a bad person had faked himself a convincing identity as a media buyer in Denmark. For those of you lucky enough not to know, media buyers are strange intermediary lifeforms who cut deals with media outlets for advertisers. They can be... challenging to deal with.
This one, however, had a straightforward proposition. He wanted to book adverts for Gillette, which has a big campaign for Fusion/Venus razors going on now. He seemed to check out - his email and ad server domains were very well faked, looking just like those of a genuine agency, and you don't need much persuasion to get ad sales to sell ad space.
Indeed, his adverts were perfectly normal - at first. But his plan was to switch these to spyware/malware bearing versions after a short delay, thus neatly embedding nastiness in perfectly proper publications.
The good news is that his foul scheme has been thwarted, with the community of ad sales bods now thoroughly alerted and all the offending fake campaigns removed. The better news is that you really, really don't want to get on the wrong side of ad sales, who take this all very personally - so anyone else trying it on will find the market a lot harder to fool. Personally, I wouldn't recommend the experiment. These people are best kept sweet...
PreviousComments on this post
Thank goodness for that! Questions though.
1.Was it the type of malware that causes infections just by visiting the page?
2. Were any criminal procedings brought against this individual ?
It would nice to think about him and his party pooper associates sitting there in a smokey intoregation room spilling the beans and cowering under the weighty consequences of their actions!
Nice article; something different to read and well written as usual.
