Researchers warn of "Typhoid Adware" at Internet cafes

Potential security threat could spread from other computer users on public WiFi networks

It's no secret that you take some security chances when surfacing the Web at WiFi hotspots at Internet cafes, but University of Calgary researchers have shed light on a new potential threat you might not have considered: Adware that shows up on your computer even though it is actually running on the computer of someone sharing the unencrypted network.

The researchers dub the threat "Typhoid Adware" in that it recalls Typhoid Mary, famous  as the first healthy carrier of typhoid fever in New York in the early 1900s.

Adware, which can annoy by popping up scads of ads, sneaks onto computers when users download things like tool bars and screen savers. Facebook users, for example, were recently tricked into allowing adware on their machines via a sexy hoax video.

"Typhoid adware is designed for public places where people bring their laptops," says associate professor John Aycock, who co-authored a paper with assistant professor Mea Wang and students Daniel Medeiros Nunes de Castro and Eric Lin. "It's far more covert, displaying advertisements on computers that don't have the adware installed, not the ones that do."

Defenses against such a threat include safeguarding videos and enabling laptops to recognize they are at an Internet café, a potentially dangerous place, computer security-wise.

Here's a video explanation of Typhoid Adware.

• Security
• adware
• security threat
• WiFi