Short for malicious advertising, malvertising uses what looks like legitimate online advertising to distribute malware and other threats with little to no interaction required from users. Typically, scammers submit graphic or text ads infected with malware to legitimate advertising networks, which can be difficult to distinguish from normal ads. And despite the hidden malicious code, malvertising efforts tend to look like regular ads you may see on a web page or as pop-ups. However, most push things like fake browser updates, scam antivirus programs, bogus tech support, and so on.

Malvertising scammers have two main methods to infiltrate their victims' devices:

• Use a provocative or enticing message in the fake ad to get someone to click on it.
• Use "drive by download" to infect a device through an invisible web page element. In this case, you don't even need to click on a link or ad image to trigger the malicious activity. Simply opening the web page hosting the fake ad can redirect you to an exploit landing page that can then take advantage of any vulnerabilities in your internet browser or device software.

So, how do you protect against malvertising?

• Keep device software up-to-date with latest security patches
• Practice safe computing and think before clicking on suspicious links
• Consider using an ad blocker in your web browser
• Know you're protected from most malicious content at the provider level through Umbrella Defense