Yahoo Malware Turned Euro PCs Into Bitcoin Miners

Yahoo has been hit with criticism after it has failed to tell people exactly how widely malware that it served to some visitors to its homepage has spread. Reports indicate that the malware infection of Yahoo ad servers served ads that transmitted malware to as many as two million computers in Europe.

The infected ads were served to visitors of the Yahoo homepage over a four-day period last week. Some of the malware that was served up could turn the infected computers into Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin mining has a huge impact on the resources available to the computer user.

The malware that Yahoo unknowingly served up attacked flaws in Java on the victim machines. Yahoo says that the malware was served up from December 31 to January 3 on its European sites. The company said that some of the ads didn't meet its criteria and admitted that some served malware.

Yahoo is being criticized for not doing anything to help the owners of computers infected with malware served from its site. The web company has promised to monitor and block any ads being used for serving malware. Estimates are that around 27000 infections resulted every hour the ads containing the malware were served. Some malware installed by the rogue ads also installed ZeuS, which tries to steal banking information.

SOURCE: The Guardian