In today’s update of technology news: malad campaign infected thousands of users to sites such as the NYTimes and The Verge since 2015; Kickstarter projects created nearly 9,000 companies and 30,000 jobs; Javascript remains top programming language.

A “maladvertising” campaign targeted more than a million users of sites such as the New York Times, The Verge, Daily Mail, PCMag, and many more and infected thousands of users a day since 2015, according to a Softpedia report.

Researchers from Proofpoint and Trend Micro spotted the campaign, codenamed AdGholoas, in October. It used sophisticated techniques to avoid detection. It used trafic filtering controls of the site ad platforms to show the ads only to customers they wanted to target. They were interested in users who had Nvidia or ATI drivers installed and OEM logos .

The security firms notified 22 involved ad platforms in June and they moved to remove the malicious ads.

For the full story see: http://news.softpedia.com/news/malvertising-campaign-infected-thousands-of-users-per-day-for-more-than-a-year-506730.shtml

Kickstarting jobs

Kickstarter projects ave created nearly 9,000 new companies and nonprofits, almost 30,000 full-time jobs and generated more than $5.3 billion in direct economic impact, according to a new study by the University of Pennsylvania.

The study also says Kickstarter projects employed 283,000 part-time collaborators.

An estimated 8,800 new companies and nonprofits have gotten their start through Kickstarter. The study says.

Among them are businesses as diverse as Palmer Luckey’s Oculus, which brought virtual reality into the mainstream; Radiotopia, an inspired podcast network of independent storytellers giving voice to subjects not well covered in traditional public media; Debbie Sterling’s GoldieBlox, which creates games and entertainment designed to develop early interest in engineering; Eric Migicovsky’s Pebble Technology, which pioneered the smartwatch category.

The full study offers lots more insight into its personal and economic impact on creators and communities. Read it here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2808000

Javascript the most popular programming language

Javascript is still the most popular programming language, followed by Java and PHP, according to the biannual ranking by UK firm RedMonk.

The top 10 from six months ago remain in place. In fact, that’s about the only surprise on the list: no change. Here’s the top 10 list:

  1. JavaScript
  2. Java
  3. PHP
  4. Python
  5. C#
  6. C++
  7. Ruby
  8. CSS
  9. C
  10. Objective-C

For the full story see: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/201