Ads by ZINC on imgur...is this normal?

[ThisIsMadness91]

About half an hour ago, I opened an imgur link and as I scrolled down to the comments, an ad popped up in the bottom right corner of the page. I refreshed several times, and although the ad changed each time, each one was in a window with "ads by ZINC" on top. Sometimes, there are ads for website called en.ilove*.tv (replace* with sports, fashion, etc.) that try to open a pop-up when I hover over them, but are blocked. These ads appear about six times before stopping until I remove individual cookies (I keep a few for websites I visit frequently).

I'm going to run scans with AdwCleaner and the free versions of Avira and Malwarebytes, and I'll report back with results for each scan when they finish. In the meantime, here's a screenshot showing an example of what I'm seeing, and the address for the gallery I'm seeing them on.

Update: AdwCleaner didn't find anything out of the ordinary. I'm going to run a Malwarebytes scan now.

 

[Jacee]

Do you have adblock, or adblock plus? That should help ... also, if you don't pay for imgur, you get the ads!

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

I don't have any kind of adblock (it's something I've considered, but most ads don't bother me), and I don't pay for imgur. Also, Malwarebytes didn't detect anything. I'm going to scan with Avira and check my laptop either tonight or tomorrow evening to see if the ZINC ads are there too.

Update: Avira didn't find anything either. I'll see if the ads appear on my laptop tomorrow.

 

[Callender]

Imgur page content

It's normal. After disabling certain security features on my machine here's a screenshot of a page on imgur.com that I browsed to:



And here's the offending script:



No need to scan with anything unless you think you were seeing an ad that was boobytrapped with malware. It's hard to say if this is the case sometimes as ads can change every few seconds/ minutes - some might be clean and some might not be.

Here's an (out of date but still relevant) article on Malvertising and how it works.

Dasient Blog: Q1'10 web-based malware data and trends

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Thanks. I'll still check my laptop later to see if the ads are there as well. I opened a different imgur gallery last night which didn't have any comments, and the ZINC ads didn't show up.

 

[Callender]

Ditto

Thanks. I'll still check my laptop later to see if the ads are there as well. I opened a different imgur gallery last night which didn't have any comments, and the ZINC ads didn't show up.

Same here. They're not on every page/ gallery!

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

The ZINC ads didn't appear on my laptop, but I have HTTPS-Everywhere enabled on that (I've disabled it on my PC because it's been causing frequent crashes since it updated to version 3.5 nearly a month ago).