You say advertising, I say block that malware

The real reason online advertising is doomed and adblockers thrive? Its malware epidemic is unacknowledged, and out of control.

The Forbes 30 Under 30 list came out this week and it featured a prominent security researcher. Other researchers were pleased to see one of their own getting positive attention, and visited the site in droves to view the list.

On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information. Or, as is popular worldwide with these malware "exploit kits," lock up their hard drives in exchange for Bitcoin ransom.

One researcher commented on Twitter that the situation was "ironic" -- and while it's certainly another variant of hackenfreude, ironic isn't exactly the word I'd use to describe what happened.

That's because this situation spotlights what happened in 2015 to billions -- yep, billions -- of people who were victims of virus-infected ads which were spread via ad networks like germs from a sneeze across the world's most popular websites.

Less than a month ago, a bogus banner ad was found serving malvertising to visitors of video site DailyMotion. After discovering it, security companyMalwarebytes contacted the online ad platform the bad ad was coming through, Atomx. The company blamed a "rogue" advertiser on the WWPromoter network.

It was estimated the adware broadcast through DailyMotion put 128 million people at risk. To be specific, it was from the notorious malware family called "Angler Exploit Kit." Remember this name, because I'm pretty sure we're going to be getting to know it a whole lot better in 2016.

Last August, Angler struck MSN.com with -- you guessed it -- another drive-by malvertising campaign. It was the same campaign that had infected Yahoo visitors back in July (an estimated 6.9 billion visits per month, it's considered the biggest malvertising attack so far).

October saw Angler targeting Daily Mail visitors through poisoned ads as well (monthly ad impressions 64.4 million). Only last month, Angler's malicious ads hit visitors to Reader's Digest (210K readers; ad impressions 1.7M). That attack sat unattended after being in the press, and was fixed only after a week of public outcry.

It's crazy to consider what a perfect marriage this is, between the advertisers and the criminals pushing the exploit kits. They have a lot in common.

Both try to trick us into giving them something we don't want to. We've recently learned that both entities surveil and track us beyond what we're OK with. And both are hard to get rid of. You know, like those gross toenail and skin condition ad-banners found at the bottom of every cheapo blog you've ever seen, forever burned into the "can't unsee" section of your brain.

It actually makes business sense to think about malware attacks like an advertiser. You want to deliver your infection to, and scrape those dollars from, every little reader out there. You need a targeted delivery system, with the widest distribution, and as many clueless middlemen as possible.

It's easy to want to blame Reader's Digest, or Yahoo, or Forbes, or Daily Mail, or any of these sites for screwing viewers by serving them malicious ads and not telling them, or not helping them with the cleanup afterward. And it's a hell of a lot easier when they've compelled us to turn off our ad blockers to simply see what brought us to their site.

But the problem is coming through them, from the ad networks themselves. The same ones, it should be mentioned, who control the Faustian bargains made by bartering and selling our information.

What should the websites do? The ad networks clearly don't have a handle on this at all, giving us one more reason to use ad blockers. They're practically the most popular malware delivery systems on Earth, and they're making the websites they do business with into the same poisonous monster. I don't even want to think about what it all means for the security practices of the ad companies handling our tracking data or the sites we visit hosting these pathogens.

So, to my friend on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list -- a malware researcher, which I'll concede is actually ironic -- I'm sorry I won't be seeing your time in that particular spotlight. What we need is a word for the fact that ad blockers have become our first line of defense against a malware epidemic. Especially during a time when the sites we visit are begging, pleading, demanding and practically tricking us into turning off Ad Block Plus.

[Image credit: Getty Images]

Fox pushes virtual reality to the limit with 30 minutes on Mars

I wasn't prepared for The Martian VR Experience. All I'd known before sitting down on padded seat in a near pitch black booth, tucked away in the Library bar at Vegas' Marquee nightclub, was that I'd be enveloped in virtual reality for up to 30 minutes. And I was very worried about that. Bad virtual reality -- VR that's lasted up to two minutes -- has sidelined me in the past, leaving a lingering nausea I'd prefer to never revisit. But in going all in with its first, commercial experience, 20th Century Fox's expensive gamble has paid off: It's created comfortable long-form VR.

"We want to make the experience really compelling, but also very enjoyable," says Ted Gagliano, 20th Century Fox's president of post-production, and one of the company's self-described 'VR amigos.' "And that means no nausea. Unfortunately, there will be lousy VR experiences out there and they will induce nausea. And hopefully, there will be some sort of standardization that curates that out, so the great experiences that show the potential of virtual reality rise to the surface."

Back in January of 2015, when Fox was showcasing its first VR experiment at CES, The Wild Experience, a companion piece to the Reese Witherspoon film 'Wild,' Gagliano had said the studio was focused on creating serialized VR, indicating that would be the business model going forward. With The Martian VR Experience, a spin-off of the Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on the red planet, however, Fox pulled a 180.

"We ended up betting the farm on the Martian and we have no regrets," says Gagliano of the studio's decisions to pause development on other in-process VR projects.

Convinced this was the perfect vehicle to commercialize VR, Fox and director Robert Stromberg expanded the project into several interactive experiences that simulate the isolation of character Mark Watney as he navigates life on Mars. The result is a near 30 minute journey, stitched together with scenes from the film, that, in combination with Oculus' Touch controllers, lets the viewer throw potatoes, navigate cold space, drive a rover, harvest plutonium and salvage solar panels.

Stromberg, the Oscar-winning production designer behind Avatar, and more recently the helmer behind Disney's Maleficent, believes production on The Martian VR Experience naturally evolved to a length that suited the project. "We set out to do an 8 - 10 minute piece," he says. " And when we started getting into it. What we realized is that when you're actually in the experience you don't get a sense that you're in there that long. It goes by very fast. But in order to tell, even a condensed version of the story, we needed more time."

"We want to make the experience really compelling, but also very enjoyable. And that means no nausea."

Ted Gagliano, 20th Century Fox

Stromberg, who runs his own VR outfit, VRC, of which Steven Spielberg is a board member, says the impetus for the project came from his talks with Fox Innovation Lab's Ted Schilowitz, the man Gagliano describes as being "in charge of finding everything cool." The two men wanted to move beyond the "gimmicks and parlor tricks" they'd seen others create with VR and really "monetize the technology" the Hollywood way.

"Nobody's really told a story yet with emotion. And I think this is the first valid attempt at that," he says.

That sense of isolation is present during the 30-minute VR "ride," but what's more noticeable is how enjoyable and engrossing each segment is. And, according to Stromberg, that's the result of endless tinkering with the psychology of VR filmmaking. "It's not just being a director anymore, I think it's like really trying to really be accurate and psychologically correct with what you're trying to do."

In particular, the rover simulation, arguably the high point of The Martian VR Experience where the viewer gets to drive around the Martian terrain, is where Stromberg's team spent most of its time trying to get things just right so as to avoid VR sickness.

"I had to make many, many changes to where the horizon was in that interactive sequence, " he says. "Because if you're slightly off on the horizon, your body knows it. If you're going too fast in a certain direction, your body feels it. So we spent a lot of time with the proper speed limit and where the horizon should be. How much up and down movement the terrain has, itself. Those types of things. Moving backwards. ... It is all in our inner ear, in our equilibrium. And it's about if you see something happening, but your body doesn't know it's happening, that's what causes the disruption."

The end result is nothing less than a joy ride on the surface of Mars that only left me with the barest hint of queasiness, a factor I chalked up to the extended time I spent driving around and the full speed I chose to do that at.

But nausea wasn't the only obstacle Stromberg and his team had to grapple with during the project's eight month development. There were technical bugs to overcome, specifically those pertaining to any software updates for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation headsets -- the experience will be made available to all three platforms, and Samsung's Gear VR mobile headset. The Oculus Touch controllers also proved to be a slight headache, as Stromberg says they were in a prototype stage and would continually breakdown. This meant his team had to work very closely with Oculus to troubleshoot problems.

"It's a symbiotic relationship between content and technology," he says of working with Oculus. "You can't have one without the other. So we are going to help each other for sure because nobody wins if we don't work together."

Since Fox intends for all of its future VR projects to be platform agnostic, the studio had to find a way to make porting its content less of a hassle. The solution? Stromberg's team devised a proprietary method of converting the game engine version of The Martian VR Experience, which runs on Unreal Engine, into a "a flattened version" that could easily be ported to any platform.

"Just look at any house with an Xbox or Wii. It's going to be that common. Every house will have a [VR] headset. Every house will give a person the option to sort of escape for a minute, or to play a game, or to look up what it's like to go to this hotel."

Robert Stromberg, VRC

Though Gagliano says Fox is still committed to experimenting with creating and selling VR in serialized bits as well as longform, no actual pricing model has been determined. What Gagliano did reveal was that The Martian VR Experience was a very costly endeavour for the studio and that if it could sell "300,000 units [or] 400, 000 units, we'll get our money back at a certain price point.

Certainly, the studio's looking to create VR spin-offs of upcoming tentpole features like Planet of the Apes and Independence Day -- Gagliano said as much -- but Stromberg's own future interests involve more than just VR storytelling and gaming. Instead, he hopes to apply VR to a more therapeutic end.

"Another thing that I'd love to do is to get involved with creating alternative ways to escape from painful situations [like with] burn victims or post-war trauma," he says. "Those types of things. End of life experiences. So rather than sitting in a bed, [you're] traveling the world. Those types of things interest me a lot."

As for how the market will take shape in 2016 and beyond, Stromberg doesn't believe the masses will get their fix from arcades or theatres designed specifically for VR. He envisions a future where diving into VR is as commonplace as a Google search.

"Just look at any house with an Xbox or Wii. It's going to be that common," says Stromberg. "Every house will have a [VR] headset. Every house will give a person the option to sort of escape for a minute, or to play a game, or to look up what it's like to go to this hotel ... on vacation or whatever. As we all have laptop computers to find things, there will be a new way to tell for sure if you want to experience something. There'll be a new way to escape or entertain."

Image credits: 20th Century Fox