Happy Friday! Close out the work week with our picks for the hottest articles from the IT and security presses:

1. "Ad Fraud Malware Updating Flash on Infected PCs" by Dennis Fisher
   Malware brought to you by advertisement, also known as ad fraud malware, is an extremely popular way to spread malware; think of it as clickbait, if you will. There has been a recent development of a new tactic in ad fraud malware: versions of the Kovter malware have been found updating Flash to ensure that video ads will play correctly. Flash is a must if one wants to view videos on a browser, and users tend to confirm the updates right away. For more, read this article.
2. "Popular VPNs leak data, don't offer promised privacy and anonymity" by Zeljka Zorz
   Think your data is private with VPN? Think again. Researchers from Queen Mary University (London) and Sapienza University (Rome) recently ran tests on 14 of the most popular commercial VPN services and found that ten of them had IP data leakage. Read more to understand the insecurity of VPNs.
3. "Hacking Team, which makes spyware for governments, just got hacked" by Stan Schroeder
   Hacking team just got hacked. Hacking team, an Italy-based maker of hacking tools, is best known for developing surveillance software: RCS. The software is also known as Remote Control System, mainly used by governments as spyware. Following the hack, there was a dump of about 400GB of Hacking Team data on BitTorrent, revealing several black hat activities the company was participating in. For further details, read this article.
4. "6 Emerging Android Threats" by Sara Peters
   Caution Android users: Android phones are facing new threats. It is predicted that 2 million cases of Android malware will emerge in the year 2015 alone. For your security safety, take a look at this article.
5. "Hacking Team Couldn't Hack Your iPhone" by Dennis Fisher
   The previous two articles lead to this final Friday Five event: Hacking Team failed to hack the iOS mobile platform. Kudos to you, Apple! This is a sigh of relief for iOS users too. For more on the security of the iOS platform, read this article.