Spammers turn to DoubleClick for open redirect

Loophole in Google’s AdSense solved, but new flaw quickly uncovered.

The good name of web giant

Google

continues to be a popular source of legitimacy among spammers, despite their efforts to shut down loopholes open to abuse.

Last month,

Google

fixed an open redirect in its

AdSense

ad serving program. The open redirect had become popular with spammers trying to lure users into clicking their links, as they could be made to look like safe URLs within

Google

‘s domain. Of course, in the best of cases these links redirected to a spamvertising website, but more commonly, and more dangerously, they took victims to sites pushing drive-by downloads of malware. In either case, as they resided on the popular

Google

domain, the URLs were unlikely to be blacklisted.

With the loophole closed only a few weeks, spammers have quickly found themselves another open redirect to stealthily push their malicious websites. This redirect resides on the domain of ad-serving firm

DoubleClick

, a company that was, coincidentally, acquired by

Google

earlier this year. It is believed that

DoubleClick

is aware of the open redirect.

More at

Sunbelt

‘s blog

here

and at the

Spammers’ Compendium


here

.

Posted on 03 June 2008 by

Virus Bulletin