Win32/AdsLock – advertising content locking tool turned ransomware

[chantal11]

Bonjour,

It is clear that breaking search engine rules and exploiting functionality to drive traffic and monetize content is a lucrative and extremely viable business for unethical or so called "blackhat" search engine optimization (SEO). We have recently seen another method of driving traffic and monetizing content that doesn't involve directly serving malicious content via search engine results, but rather uses a modified version of an Internet advertising technique known as content locking.

According to information released in May by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), "Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $7.3 billion for the first quarter of 2011, representing a 23 percent increase over the same period in 2010". The full IAB 2010 report contains more detailed information, suggesting that the most popular ad format for 2010, which represented 46% of $26 billion in revenue, came from search.

Win32/AdsLock – advertising content locking tool turned ransomware - Microsoft Malware Protection Center

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