Malvertising is a cyber threat found in malicious advertising. In this case, hackers use advertising to spread malware. The scary part about malvertising is hackers can insert these malicious advertisements into legitimate webpages, making them all the more difficult to spot.

Not only are the ads difficult to spot, but they are difficult to regulate and control as well. Large numbers of these ads are spread throughout advertising networks daily. This is makes is very difficult for networks to perform thorough analysis of every ad. Often, companies rely on third party vendors or software to manage their online ads. This is make it even more difficult to spot every ad and manage what is being put out into the online world.

How does it work?

A small piece of code is hidden deep within a legitimate looking advertisement, which will direct the user's machine to a compromised server. An exploit kid hosted on that server will execute once the users device makes a successful connection. The hacker can then install malware using a security bypass created by the exploit kit. When malware is successfully installed, it opens a world of opportunity and data to the jacker. A hacker could perform numerous actions such as extracting sensitive or financial information. The worst part of it all; this entire process happens incognito. The user has no idea their device is infected.

Of course, there are ways to spot malware, and certain things you can look for when you think your device may be infected. We go over <a href="http://magnitech.com/2018/10/15/mischievous-malware/">mischievous malware here</a>.