Hackers are looking for new ways to compromise target systems to make profit out of it. In this year, we have seen a special hacking technique, which infects users by using malware advertising . Now hackers are using the same technique to hack into military systems.





Security firm Invincea said it has detected many instances of people within defense and aerospace companies stumbling across malicious advertisements that are shown only to them, a scheme it calls “Operation DeathClick".





Attack Scenario

When a user lands on an ad-supported website, the malicious ads drops malware in user's computer. Then the malware allows an attacker to gain backdoor access to the user's system.





The specialty in this case is, the attacker can select his/her own targets easily. Because most of the ad-networks allows advertisers to select a region, ip range, or even specific corporations to display ads.





Invincea has detected such harmful landing pages on websites such as the fantasy football site fleaflicker.com, earthlink.com and the conservative commentary site theblaze.com.





Since web based firms makes most of the revenue from advertisements, malvertising attacks can badly affect them.





Patrick Belcher, director of malware analysis at Invincea, said "The cybercriminals are taking advantage of a sea change in the online advertising industry, which has mostly stopped selling “bulk” user impressions and moved to real-time bidding for advertisements that are highly targeted"





"The malware is modified so frequently that it is hard for security products to detect", he added.



