Millions of people use PornHub every day, so it probably makes sense that if you wanted to infect the computers of the majority of the population of the world then that would be a good place to start.

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And this is exactly what a set of hackers have allegedly done recently. According to experts from cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, they were able to hijack the website’s advertising supply chain and able to insert malicious adverts offering updates to the three most popular web browsers – Chrome, Safari and Firefox – but instead providing links to download malware into your computer. Sneaky.

The attack affecting PornHub was apparently committed by a group known as KovCoreG and its intention was to infect browsers with the any number of different malware combinations to benefit the hackers. Proofpoint explains:

The hackers could have been encouraging users to download Kovter ad fraud malware, although it could just as easily have been ransomware, an information stealer, or any other malware.

Advertising fraud is so prevalent on the internet these days that some advertisers only receive $0.01 for every $1 of impressions they pay for.

Regardless, threat actors are following the money and looking to more effective combinations of social engineering, targeting, and pre-filtering to infect new victims at scale.

That’s pretty serious stuff, but I suppose if you put your information out there on the internet then it’s there for the taking. Suppose we should listen to security/virus warnings more often.

If you’re worried that you were infected – and who wouldn’t be considering it was on PornHub – then you might not need to be so vexed because Pornhub apparently moved quickly to protect its users when it learned of the threat. Phew. Still probably need to update your antivirus software though considering these guys are everywhere.

For more PornHub, check out their offer to pay you $25,000 to watch porn all day every day. Even with the malware that’s too good an offer to turn down.