Yahoo Malware Attack Reportedly More Far-Reaching Than Previously Thought

Yahoo has reported a while back that on January the 3rd, their website has been infected with ad-related malware content. The FoxIT security company reported that the UK, France and Romania were the countries who suffered heavily due to this attack, but further details prove more to it.

First of all, Yahoo stated this Friday that the attack took palace between December 27th and January 3rd, not only on January the 3rd as previously thought. This widens the window of malware infection, and also confirms the fact that more than 2 million PCs may have been infected. Also, Yahoo said that people outside Europe may have been hit by the infected ads before they could do something about it. Anyone using the Yahoo Mail or IM services during that time frame may have been served malware which exploits vulnerabilities in Java and had installed a variety of malware-related software.

Another security company based in the United States called Light Cyber said that one of the malware present in Yahoo’s ad network was designed to link infected PCs and form a Bitcoin mining operation. Other exploits involve theft of usernames and passwords, disabling antivirus software and remote control of computers. To be noted is that Mac computers or mobile devices were not harmed by the software, only PCs, laptops and netbooks running on Windows-based operating systems were vulnerable to the attack.

Yahoo has released some precautionary steps to take in order to prevent and detect further infection by the malware in cause:

• “Ensure that your computer has the latest patches installed.
  – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/windows-update
• Update to the latest versions of Java and Adobe software.
  Java: http://java.com/en/download/help/java_update.xml
  Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates.html
• Use an antivirus application and ensure that it is updated regularly.”

Thank you Cnet for providing us with this information