Forum
Comments:
-
- on Fri 31 Oct 2008
- 05:33:00 PM UTC
CDN = content distribution
CDN = content distribution network; ads, pics, other media used by the site(s)
About advertising networks in general, it is possible that some of them (usually the smaller ones, with poor control over content - Clicksor is one that comes to mind) can host malicious ads, that is for example Flash ads that use known exploits to push crap to unsuspecting users.
Most, if not all, the sites you listed are just annoyances, or not if one likes his daily dose of advertising. This is just a quick assesment based on my memory.
"Men make good pets."
Surrogate advertising sites within green pages
I have some questions regarding the safety of such ad sites, like for instance:
dw.com.com
i.i.com.com
img.com.com
image.com.com
edge.quantserve.com (this one belongs to quantcast which is listed on Hp-Hosts for phishing!!)
revsci.net
ad.doubleclick.net
These are mostly used by the CNET sites but also by many other sites, like Last.fm, for instance (it uses dw.com.com), for the purpose of ads. I use Adblock Plus and Noscript, and both happen to block all of these surrogate sites. The thing is: some pages won't work properly if you don't have the ad sites on your white list, like "TV.com", you can't even search anything in case you don't have dw.com.com enabled to work, as it seems they redirect all the "TV.com" search results to pass within it. That worries me!
Does anyone has any concrete evidence that such sites like dw.com.com are responsible for any kind security break, like phishing, warez of any kind?? Or are these just plain ad-sites, just for the sake of ads, no serious threat involved?
Also i have another question regarding surrogate and embeded domains: what does "cdn" stands for? Is it ad-oriented too?? Threat? (cdn like in "cdn.whatever.com", "whatever.com.cdn", etc)