Adobe Flash Player Paid Ads on Yahoo & Bing Link to Malware (Again..)

That took a whole, what, 3 days?

Folks roaming the Bing and Yahoo search engines looking for a good place to download the Adobe Flash Player should be wary of paid ads linking to malware (yet again). Cybercriminals have already got a fresh batch of malware-laden ads running on both Yahoo and Bing, despite being caught just this past Friday running the same scam.

It must be working on some level if they’re this persistent.

GFI Labs is hot on their tail, though, as Chris Boyd posted their latest malware-link traps on the GFI Labs Blog early this morning.

Running a search for keywords, “flash player download” on Yahoo or Bing brings up a variety of paid links, two of which take unsuspecting users to websites that offer malware instead of the actual Adobe Flash Player.

The first result actually takes users to a website that closely resembles the Adobe.com website, and actually links to it aside from the malicious download button.

Looking at the URL, you will see that it says, “malaysiaaktiff[dot]com” instead of adobe.com, serving as a red flag that maybe you’re in store for trouble.

When I clicked the download link on the website pretending to be Adobe.com, ESET NOD32 Antivirus immediately blocked it, which only proves that every internet user should be running up-to-date antivirus software on their PC.


Upon viewing the alert from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, it appears that the nasty malware file is coming from “adobe-flash[dot]dl-softonic[dot]net/”. So be cautious if you happen to see this URL in the future.



Hopefully these links will be removed from both Yahoo and Bing search engines soon, until then.. surf with caution! As always, you should be running up-to-date antivirus software.

Have you come across any bad paid ad links on Yahoo, Bing, or even Google? Share your experience below!