Skype serving virus-laden ads

In the last 24 hours, a virus ad managed to slip through Microsoft filters and made its way into Skype's ad slot.

Clicking on the advertisement will take you to a site pretending to be Adobe, and try to download viruses to your machine. This is not how Adobe distributes updates. This is how attackers trick unsuspecting users to willingly install malicious software.

The payload? It is a very rapid load iframe that redirects to that page again. Getting the payload to successfully infect sandboxes have not been successful so far.

And this might be an IE only thing. The rapid load iframe does not work on Firefox or Chrome.

Microsoft seems to be aware about this issue, but did not comment further.

Suggested quick fix
Add these entries into your local host file:

# fighting off malware/virus
127.0.0.1 qwindowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 q-windowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 xwindowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 x-windowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 zwindowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 z-windowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 wed322d2.qwindowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 wed322d2.q-windowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 wed322d2.xwindowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 wed322d2.x-windowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 wed322d2.zwindowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 wed322d2.z-windowsdefender.nl
127.0.0.1 m.adnxs.com
127.0.0.1 cdn.adnxs.com

Note: This is not the comprehensive list of URLs used in the attack. There may be more than the ones indicated here.