Malicious advertisements made their way last week to almost two dozen popular websites and used browser-based exploits to infect computers with CryptoWall, a nasty file-encrypting ransomware program.
The malicious advertising, or malvertising, campaign was discovered by researchers from security firm Proofpoint and had an impact on visitors to
at least 22 popular websites including Yahoo’s Finance and Fantasy Sports sites, realestate.aol.com, theatlantic.com, 9gag.com and match.com.
“All told, more than 3 million visitors per day were potentially exposed to this malvertising campaign,” the Proofpoint researchers said in a report published Wednesday.