Nitrogen Malvertising - Sneaky Malware in Search Ads
28-Jul-23
Nitrogen, a recently identified malvertising operation, targets individuals looking for IT equipment by making use of Google Search and Bing Ads. Users are tricked into downloading trojan-infected installers by the campaign. Its main goal seems to be to infiltrate business networks, possibly opening the door for more ransomware assaults in the future. Users who look for these programmes on a search engine are displayed advertisements for the software when they do so.
The Nitrogen campaign primarily targets North American technology companies and nonprofit organisations. It works by pretending to be software installers for popular programmes including AnyDesk, Cisco AnyConnect VPN, TreeSize Free, and WinSCP. Users are sent to hacked WordPress hosting pages after clicking the given link, which looks exactly like the legitimate software download page.
