This article is more than 1 year old

Geek.com visitors attacked by DIY exploit kit

Researchers blame 'poor coding practices'

Technology news and reviews site Geek.com was recently hit by an attack that redirected visitors to malicious websites that attempted to install malware on their computers, researchers from zScaler said.

Feature articles on the website, in addition to its home page and “about us” page, contained invisible iframes that downloaded heavily obfuscated JavaScript from sites infected with a DIY exploit kit, zScaler said on Sunday. The malicious code then attempted to exploit unpatched security vulnerabilities on the end user's machine.

“Unfortunately, we see hundreds of attacks such as this each and every day,” researcher Umesh Wanve wrote. “Many legitimate websites are being compromised by taking advantage of poor coding practices in web applications. Attackers are constantly on the lookout for popular websites or top news sites as targets for their attacks. Users need to be aware that no site is a safe site.”

At time of writing it was unclear if Geek.com had removed the infected pages. ®

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