Cyberattackers learn targeted advertising tricks

One of the most prevalent ways cybercriminals are taking control of computers is by seeding infections on millions of legitimate Web pages. Click on an infected page, and the bad guys own you. Now the best and brightest of these crooks are borrowing methodologies perfected by the online advertising industry to increase their effectiveness.

"You have two disciplines that care very much about targeting their content," says Wayne Huang, chief executive of virus-detection company Armorize Technologies. "You've got this one discipline taking very mature, very advanced targeting technology from another discipline and adapting it for their malicious use."