Internet security: forced redirects

Self-tutoring about the wonderful Internet: the tutor revisits topic he’s mentioned before.

Today I clicked on a site, from a search list, that I’ve clicked before. It’s one of many car repair bulletin boards I visit, since we don’t drive new cars anymore. Yet, I don’t mind fixing the cars myself, when I can get good info about how.

I successfully navigated to the site, and was reading an entry, when all of a sudden three layers of pop-ups greeted me, telling me my computer was compromised, to download “fix-ware” immediately, and giving me a number to call for immediate assistance. (Interestingly, it was a 555 number.)

I knew this was a scam. What caught my eye, though, was that the web address wasn’t the car repair site anymore; I’d been redirected, without clicking anything. I didn’t even know that was possible.

I did a search on redirects from advertising and I guess it is possible for an advertisement to redirect you from the website you were on, without you even clicking anything. It’s called a “forced redirect.”

As I understand, the potential harm happens if the victim interacts with the scam page. The best thing is just to ignore it and close the tab, which is what I did.

I ran a scan afterwards, and everything came back good.

Interesting, eh?

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pcrisk.com