Weather Underground's security issue
I will often use the Weather Underground website (www.wunderground.com/) to check the forecast, but I may start using the National Weather Service's site (www.weather.gov/) instead. If I leave a tab on my web browser at work on the Weather Underground site, the image shown will eventually result. That browser is an up-to-date Firefox without Adobe Flash running on Windows 7. It gets redirected to another website, always with a different domain name, and always with two seemingly random numbers in the path. It sure stinks of malware. It may be coming from something like an advertisement that can sneak a redirection into the web page rather than content generated by Weather Underground, or maybe they have a more direct breach of security. Either way, I'm sure Weather Underground wouldn't do this, but it is still annoying.
The issue has occurred five times over more than a month, maybe two, on the same computer. I did attempt to inform them of the issue, but I haven't seen any indication that anyone took it seriously. It has happened twice since that attempt.
At home, I run Firefox on Linux and do have Flash installed, although I usually have it disabled. The issue never happens there. I haven't yet tried on another system without Flash, but suspect that may trigger the redirection.
What this doesn't answer is what happens when this malware could redirect a browser, but finds one with Flash installed and enabled instead. I also didn't accept this download. I'm not employed to do security research, and the IT department is quite distant.
Weather Underground's security issue
I will often use the Weather Underground website (www.wunderground.com/) to check the forecast, but I may start using the National Weather Service's site (www.weather.gov/) instead. If I leave a tab on my web browser at work on the Weather Underground site, the image shown will eventually result. That browser is an up-to-date Firefox without Adobe Flash running on Windows 7. It gets redirected to another website, always with a different domain name, and always with two seemingly random numbers in the path. It sure stinks of malware. It may be coming from something like an advertisement that can sneak a redirection into the web page rather than content generated by Weather Underground, or maybe they have a more direct breach of security. Either way, I'm sure Weather Underground wouldn't do this, but it is still annoying.
The issue has occurred five times over more than a month, maybe two, on the same computer. I did attempt to inform them of the issue, but I haven't seen any indication that anyone took it seriously. It has happened twice since that attempt.
At home, I run Firefox on Linux and do have Flash installed, although I usually have it disabled. The issue never happens there. I haven't yet tried on another system without Flash, but suspect that may trigger the redirection.
What this doesn't answer is what happens when this malware could redirect a browser, but finds one with Flash installed and enabled instead. I also didn't accept this download. I'm not employed to do security research, and the IT department is quite distant.