Posted on 06/23/2016 10:08:42 PM PDT by Utilizer
A study from GeoEdge, an ad scanning vendor, reveals that Flash has been wrongly accused as the root cause of today's malvertising campaigns, but in reality, switching to HTML5 ads won't safeguard users from attacks because the vulnerabilities are in the ad platforms and advertising standards themselves.
The evidence exists to proclaim Flash as one of today's most vulnerable and insecure software applications. Targeted in cyber-espionage and malvertising campaigns, Flash has gotten a bad reputation, and for a good reason. HTML5 ads are replacing Flash ads in the industry
Security researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in Flash almost every month, and for many years, Adobe has been slow to patch them. Things changed recently after browser vendors threatened to have the plugin disabled for most of their users.
But Adobe's new approach to Flash security issues came a little too late, as the community had already worked for years at adding the appropriate features to HTML5 and other standards in order to replace Adobe's piece of junk.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.softpedia.com ...
Advertising itself is inherently malware. If I can’t view a site without ads, I don’t visit that site.
Which, in combination with Javascript blocking, is how I get away with not running an anti-virus (to kill my machine resources) and still never get any malware.
I think that used to be true with old versions of Internet security suites, but as a current subscriber of Norton Internet Security, the current version I use is very effective and uses very little system resources.
From the Geoedge link:
Security:It sounds like Javascript in HTML5 can be exploited, but overall HTML5 is still safer than Flash.
Flash vulnerabilities allow for malicious software to install on a user’s computer silently. Currently, HTML5 has no vulnerability that would allow malicious software to install on a user’s computer silently. HTML5 alerts the user whenever an install attempt is made.
Also, DON'T CLICK ON POPUPS!
Ads should just be static.... like in the newspapers. And not suck away valuable resources.
What about pop-overs and unders? Those are all I have problems with.
95% of Internet traffic and time is ads.
Ping.
> 95% of Internet traffic and time is ads.
I think you’re forgetting pr0n and pirated video over BitTorrent :-)
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