Ad ransomware nixed

White hats have thwarted a global malvertising campaign that redirected surfers to the Neutrino Exploit Kit.

The sophisticated malicious advertisement campaign exposed millions of users in regions including North America, EU, Asia Pac and the Middle East to attack.

The operation was geared towards spreading CrypMIC, a ransomware variant. Coding mistakes meant the attack was ineffective.

Security researchers in Cisco’s Talos division and GoDaddy worked together to mitigate the threat by removing the accounts used to register the subdomains behind the campaign. Prompt action by white hats prevented cybercrooks from modifying the campaign in order to make it more effective. ®