Photo: TheFlesh (Getty)
In other words, we are all screwed. Pun intended.
So it seems if you’re an avid Pornhub user (which is all of us), you may have gotten some virus and you probably don’t even know it. According to Independent, there has been a malicious advert running on the porn site for over a year. This advert tricks users into installing a fake software update in order to infiltrate their computers and click on ads to spread the virus.
And that sounds awful, but who in this day and age is just clicking on things like that? That’s like giving money to the Nigerian prince.
The folks behind the hack are known as KovCoreG, as they’ve used an ad known as Kovter to ruin the lives of people who just want to see naked people on film.
The virus was promptly shut down when it was discovered by Proofpoint, a security firm, but it’s been running undiscovered for over a year, which means the damage is already done, and millions of users in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada have already been hacked.
Fortunately, though, the hack could have been much worse, and the software could have been ransomware or something, and could have used people’s browsing data to commit fraud.
So yeah, that virus is still running wild. So how do you protect yourself? Oh, I don’t know, maybe don’t click on something that tells you to “update,” especially when you’re on a site that specializes in nothing but good old porn.
And that’s your advice for the day.
