In a word, ads. In another, prontexi.
I was one of the multitudes seduced by the speed and elegance of Google's Chrome browser. I'd given it a shot first on the ancient Linux box, where nothing I tried could keep Firefox from crashing if I so much as looked at it wrong. Chrome doesn't crash anywhere near as much on that box, but when it does, it takes the whole computer with it.
That's not enough for me to give it the old heave-ho and proclaim it's craptitude to the world. No, it takes a whole new level of suck before I go looking for the nearest available soapbox.
I found that level of suck, and it's name is prontexi. Prontexi is malware served up by poisoned ads from a compromised adserver. The end user does not need to click on the ad or even mouseover. Just having the ad load is sufficient to be infected if your security suite isn't up to snuff.
And this is where Chome falls flat on it's face and breaks it's nose. Chrome has extensions like AdBlock and AdThwart, which may look good on the surface, but they only hide ads after they've been fetched. This means although you may not see the ads, if there's a poison payload in that ad AdBlock is hiding, Chrome has dutifuly gone to retrieve it. You'd better hope whatever antivirus software you're running is up to the task. Fortunately for me, Avast! was able to catch an attempted infection when I was innocently browsing a baseball forum of impeccable reputation.
I am not a computer professional or an IT security expert, but I know when something doesn't belong on my system. And Chrome does not belong on my system.
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