Armorize Partners With Symantec to Provide Powerful Anti-Malvertising Technology

Armorize Partners With Symantec to Provide Its Powerful Anti-Malvertising Technology to Symantec's New Solution, AdVantage, to Help Customers Protect Themselves From the Growing Threat of Malicious Advertising Attacks.

The partnership will utilize the advanced malware detection engine from Armorize's successful HackAlert product lines to power Symantec's new cloud-based anti-malvertising solution, Symantec AdVantage.The Symantec AdVantage solution will provide its customers with the ability to monitor the ads displayed on their websites for web malware. The product dashboard will also present valuable statistics which enable publishers to compare the quality of ads and ad networks they work with based on the safety ratings and reputation scores for each specific ad or network.

Some of the users who visited KickassTorrents (KAT), one of the most popular torrent trackers on the Internet, over the weekend had the nasty surprise of being infected with a rogue antivirus program called "Security Sphere 2012."

According to experts from Web security vendor Armorize Technologies who detected the drive-by download attack, the infection process did not require any user interaction if the victim had outdated browser plug-ins.

Malvertizing (malicious advertising) attacks are much more dangerous than those relying on spammed links or social engineering because they exploit the trust relationship between users and their favorite websites. Coupled with drive-by download exploits like those used in this case, such incidents can result in a high number of victims.Symantec has partnered with Armorize Technologies to develop a new cloud-based service called Symantec AdVantage, which promises to help webmasters detect malicious code hidden within the advertisements displayed on their websites.