Suffering Security Succotash — Google Chrome attacked via ads on Curse

I really do not have a huge problem with ads served up on web sites save for one problem.  They are not secure.

Ads can do almost anything unless publisher/subscriber to the ad service/broker agree to content restrictions & enforce them — and browser makers design/code their web browsers correctly, along with OS vendors that the browsers run on.

Just like the sites we visit themselves, advertisers and ad brokering services need to make sure their entire computing rigamarole does not get compromised.

Sadly, things just do not work out like they are supposed to work out.

On November 1, 2012 Curse.com posted a security bulletin on their web site saying that they had been informed by Google of a JavaScript-injection attack upon Chrome browser users visiting the Curse.com web site.

This event highlights how important it is for web browser developers, advertisers & ad brokers, and web sites to all work together to make sure that malware does not get through.

Until they do this, you are much safer if you block ads in general.  This incident shows that, security-wise, the advertising community is "just not there yet" in terms of adequate safety.

What happened in this case was a web advertisement company's computers got hacked, and their computers in turn performed a JavaScript-injection via its ads that were displaying on Curse.com.

If you trust other companies/people's computers too much, then pretty soon you will not be able to trust your own computer.  This bad ad incident drives this point home very clearly.

There are ad-blocker extensions for the major web browsers and it is a good idea to use them.  When the advertising agencies/clients discover a substantial portion of the intelligent public are blocking their ads, they will feel pressure to make themselves trustworthy.  Right now, they are not trustworthy enough.