288 major websites were affected due to a violent attack using a malicious advertising campaign in the Netherlands

A few days ago a strong and malicious attack occurred. The majority of the most popular websites in the Netherlands were affected and as a result millions of users became victims of the attack. The first signs of the attacks were noticed early on Sunday. Exploit kit Angler Among has been spread amongst the other malware. It distributes different hostile apps, such as CryptoWall 4.0.

The attack was based on a malicious advertising campaign. One of the adverts, shown to visitors of site, included a link to a malware or potentially unwanted content.

By Monday, at least 288 sites were infected with malicious advertisements and fraudsters earned millions of dollars. They even hit the site Nu.nl, one of the most popular Dutch news portals. According to statistics, Nu.nl had 50 million visitors in March.

Marktplaats.nl was among other infected resources, as well as many well-known news and cultural sites. Similar attacks previously affected many of the major web resources, such as the Daily Mail and Forbes news sites.

How to protect against malware?

In order to establish a strong defence against malware, you need to use a special scanning software that will check the site for viruses and vulnerabilities, as well as providing scan reporting along with precise, actionable threat mitigation advice. LeaderSSL offers the following types of scanners for sites:

• GeoTrust Anti-Malware Scan
  
• Comodo HackerGuardian PCI Scan Control Center
  
• Comodo HackerGuardian PCI Scan Control Center Enterprise
  

Also, for a quick recovery after being hacked, we advise you to use the tool Dropmysite. It will create an automatic backup of the site, which allows site recovery in just a couple of clicks.