Top websites are targets for malvertising
A trend in the Alexa Top Million sites points to the popularity of commercial blogs and adult-themed websites, particularly pornography. Hackers have exploited these popular websites by inserting malicious code into some of them, ultimately hurting a brand’s image.
A case in point is the 2009 incident suffered by Gawker, ranked 641 globally by Alexa as of May 12, 2014, in which they were tricked into running a fake Suzuki ad containing malicious code, otherwise known as malvertising.
Another popular website compromised by a similar method was the New York Times, ranked 12 globally as of May 12, 2014.
In 2015, the Yahoo Network was the victim of a malvertising attack that went undetected by Yahoo for 9 days (see zvelo blog), putting millions of end users at risk of being infected.
The jeopardizing of such popular websites greatly diminishes the trust by end-users, resulting in a decrease in traffic.
By utilizing zvelo contextual categorization and malicious website detection services, which ensure accurate classification of the Alexa Top Million sites, the ad tech market can better guarantee the placement of ads on brand-safe and non-malicious websites.
Alexa, on their website, rightly proclaims that “Information is power – if you have the right tools.” Combine those “right tools” with zvelo high performance and accurate contextual categorization engine, and the outcome will be even more powerful.
