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The term "malvertising" (or "malicious advertising") suggests an overlap with ads, and not good ones. Therefore, it fuels the fallacy that its impact hardly goes beyond frustration. As a result, those who are unfamiliar might get the impression that it is no big deal, but this is a far cry from the case.

Malvertising acts as a vessel for malware propagation.  To set such a stratagem in motion, cybercriminals poison legitimate websites with ads that lead to shady URLs or download malicious code c

A Microsoft representative announced on 28 December 2023 that it is again disabling the ms-appinstaller protocol handler by default following its abuse by multiple threat actors to distribute malware.  "The observed threat actor activity abuses the current implementation of the ms-app installer protocol handler as an access vector for malware that may lead to ransomware distribution," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said.  It further noted that several cybercriminals are offering a malwar

The malware downloader BATLOADER has been observed abusing Google ADs to deliver secondary payloads like Vidar Stealer and Ursnif.  According to cybersecurity researchers, malicious ads are used to spoof a wide range of legitimate apps and services, such as Adobe, OpenAPI's ChatGPT, Spotify, Tableau, and Zoom.  BATLOADER, as the name suggests, is a loader responsible for distributing next-stage malware such as information stealers, banking malware, Cobalt Strike, and even ransomware.

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