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London Stock Exchange website gets hacked with malware ads
THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE (LSE) website has been bombarded with fake insecurity software adverts that point to malware.
It seems that dodgy security ads have been unknowingly hosted at the LSE website for at least a few months. An analysis of the website revealed that 363 pages had unwittingly hosted the malicious ads over a 90 day period.
The LSE told the BBC that the website has now been given a clean bill of health and it suspects that adverts provided by a third party were responsible for the malware.
Insecurity expert Paul Mutton ran analyses on the website after clicking on the dodgy links yesterday. Apparently the target website was blocked by Firefox but Mutton got infected through Google's Chrome web browser, in which he was hit with a ridiculous number of pop up ads.
Using Google's safe browsing scheme to scan for suspicious code, Mutton found that the LSE website had been listed as hosting dodgy adverts six times in 90 days.
Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley concurred with Mutton that the LSE website had been salted with malware advertising.
"Our suspicion would be that it was the third-party advertising network running via the site that delivered the malware," he told the BBC.
The LSE has not had a good technology day for some time now. Last year the INQUIRER reported that the LSE saw significant stock losses after postponing a new trading system due to glitches created by sabotaged software.
Then earlier this month the LSE and the Nasdaq stock exchange both fell victim to hackers who managed to invade their systems. µ
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This news reinforces how important it is for organisations to protect their online presence. Whilst the LSE is not directly to blame for the malware, the association with this will not help recent negative press about technology faults http://bit.ly/hXfIcW. Customer trust is vital, and providing a stable business platform is key to success.
Several years ago I set my browser home page to a blank page instead of my ISP's web page after one opf their adverts spawned an uncloseable pop-up window telling me my PC was infected and I needed to click the "download now" button to fix it.
It is astonishing that an organisation like the London Stock Exchange still allows unscreened ads onto their web pages. Either their IT department is run by clowns or their accountants felt that the few extra pennies generated by these ads was worth the risk of infecting all of their users with malware.