Scammers Are Abusing the Microsoft Edge News Feed

Scammers are abusing Microsoft Edge's news feed, running malicious ads in an effort to direct users to tech support scams....
Scammers Are Abusing the Microsoft Edge News Feed
Written by Matt Milano

Scammers are abusing Microsoft Edge’s news feed, running malicious ads in an effort to direct users to tech support scams.

Edge is Microsoft’s Chromium-based web browser that replaced Internet Explorer. Like many browsers, Edge provides a news feed for users. The feed also contains various advertisements, which scammers have figured out how to abuse.

Malwarebytes researchers outlined how the scam works:

When a user clicks on one of the malicious ads, a request to the Taboola ad network is made via an API (api.taboola.com) to honor the click on the ad banner. The server will respond with the next URL to load.

This scheme is meant to trick innocent users with fake browser locker pages, very well known and used by tech support scammers. What’s worth noticing is the cloud infrastructure that is being leveraged here, making it very difficult to block.

Malwarebytes said this particular scam is one of the biggest it has seen, and has been active for at least a couple of months. Users should use an ad and malware blocker, and may be better off using another browser until Microsoft addresses the issue.

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