Quote:
Originally Posted by madslug
Hi Dean - a few weeks back I made a post which related to the history of one of the tracking scripts. Even though I linked to a google cache, when people visited the page they had malware download warnings.
The big problem is that for the last 4/5 years, adverts relying on javascripts, etc have been associated with the downloading of malware and rootkits. DPI is seen in the same light as that malware and rootkits.
The risks are the origins of the adblockers, cookie removal/blocking and hosts file restrictions far more than the adverts themselves.
My personal view is that the advertising industry needs to clean up its act and start to use methods which do not expose anyone viewing ads to such risks, not look for methods to increase those risks. And DPI is a method too far. Ad delivery needs to go back to what it was doing before the malware and rootkits got added by the hackers.
Give us adverts backed by a secure system. For current technology that means that a lot of the current ads are not acceptable: no gifs, no flash, no javascript. Spend the development money on a secure delivery system, needs to be developed from scratch.
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Malware is developed professionally with the intent to make money. Earlier forms of malware up until around 2005 were principally designed to be installed on a user's computer as a forced advertising or forced search model. There was a change in the installation methods after the first rootkit, hackerdefender, was stealth installed. From around 2004 malware has mostly used rootkit techniques as part of the installation. The Apropos rootkit (one of many different kinds of malware) was stealth installed, forced advertising with the advertising being provided by ContextPlus. Things have progressed since then to identity theft, credit card fraud, keylogging, extortion and the incorporation of users' machines into botnets. The malware industry is highly competitive and very profitable.
The larger companies that had been involved were being investigated in the USA and several changed their business model. Gator became Claria where several of NebuAd's staff come from and 121Media became Phorm. There's others. Bob Dykes of NebuAd is from Juniper Networks.