Cyber Incident Victim: WBTV
Date:
May 2016
Location:
United States of America
Summary
A CBS-affiliated television station, WBTV, along with another affiliate, inadvertently exposed visitors to the Angler exploit kit through a malvertising attack orchestrated via a compromised Taggify self-serve advertising platform. A rogue advertiser abused hijacked GoDaddy accounts to create malicious subdomains hosting deceptive ad content, which dynamically served legitimate banners to web crawlers while redirecting genuine users to the exploit kit via hidden iframes. The attack leveraged domains like som.barkisdesign.com to deliver malicious JavaScript, ultimately redirecting victims to Angler's infrastructure for potential system compromise. Collaborative efforts between the ad platform, affected publishers, and domain registrar disrupted the ongoing campaign, which utilized IP address 199.255.137.197 and employed evasion techniques based on user-agent and IP filtering.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 3 motives | 1 technique |
| Threat Actors | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0 actors | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
On or around May 4, 2016, a malvertising attack impacted visitors to two CBS-affiliated television station websites: KMOV in St. Louis and WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. A rogue advertiser compromised the Taggify self-serve advertising platform to deliver the Angler exploit kit through malicious banner ads. Attackers hijacked GoDaddy accounts to register subdomains that hosted both legitimate-looking ad content and malicious code, enabling them to alternate between clean and infected advertisements based on factors such as time of day, user agent, and IP address blacklists. The primary malicious domain appeared parked with no active content, while its subdomain delivered the exploit kit through a deceptive iframe redirect. This technique allowed the attackers to evade detection by serving benign ads to web crawlers and security scanners while redirecting actual visitors to compromised servers.
The attack chain began when visitors accessed KMOV.com, which loaded an ad from Taggify's platform (data.rtbfy.com). This triggered a connection to the rogue advertiser's server at som.barkisdesign.com, which delivered a malicious JavaScript file. The script redirected users to the Angler exploit kit hosted at parkwateavereverende.fredricholmgren.se, where exploitation attempts occurred. At the time of Malwarebytes' initial report, the attack remained active. The security firm notified Taggify, the affected publishers, and GoDaddy about the ongoing compromise. Identified indicators of compromise included the domain som.barkisdesign.com and IP address 199.255.137.197. Subsequent updates confirmed Taggify's collaboration in resolving the incident by May 5, with the company later implementing proactive detection tools to prevent similar malvertising attacks as noted in a November update. The incident exposed visitors to drive-by download attempts leveraging known vulnerabilities in the Angler exploit kit.