A Chinese Ad Firm Is Using Malware to Get More Clicks (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard report: Advertising agencies go to great lengths to spread their clients' messages. Now, researchers have uncovered a new approach: malware. This month, cybersecurity company Check Point reports that a Chinese group called Yingmob has distributed mobile device malware on a massive scale, apparently alongside a legitimate advertising analytics business. Listed as based in Beijing's Chaoyang District, Yingmob, a subsidiary of MIG Unmobi Technology Inc., markets itself like any other advertising firm. Its professional-looking website claims its easy-to-deploy ads support text, pictures, and video, and don't affect the user experience. It offers pop-up, sidebar, and in-app adverts. But Check Point's report claims that part of the company -- the "Development Team for Overseas Platform," which employs a staff of 25 people -- is responsible for malware it has dubbed HummingBad. This malware allows the injection of adverts into victims' devices. Whenever someone clicks on one of these adverts, Yingmob gets paid, just like a typical advertising campaign. The first infection method Check Point came across was a "drive-by-download," whereby Yingmob's malware targets a victim when they visit a malicious website, then proceeds to download malicious apps onto their device. In its analysis, Check Point writes that nearly 10 million people are using malicious Android apps made by Yingmob.

Comments

Time to spread the following

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"Yingmob uses this platform to promote Tibetan Independence."

The matter should sort itself out rather quickly.

Isn't all advertising malware

[Anonymous Coward]

crap that takes system resources without permission, sounds like malware AND advertising to me

Chinese cheat

[mi]

Chinese cheat. Period. Ex-Soviets and formerly-Cubans do too. No, this is not "racism" — the trait is not genetic, it is cultural. When you are dealing with the abusive State for most of the things, cheating is the only way to have a reasonably comfortable life. It is not considered wrong or dishonest — everybody does it.

Western world weren't cheating quite so much not because they are racially superior somehow, but simply because they don't interact with the State as much as victims of Socialism/Communism are forced to.

It is coming to America as well — and not just with the immigrants, but with the "natives" too, because the State (comparably abusive in all countries) is increasingly in charge of various aspects of our lives. From tax-evaders, to highway speeders swearing they "didn't do it", to "workman's compensation" false claims, to Medicare fraud — cheating the government and the fugly bureaucrats who represent it is Ok.

And then you forget to stop and cheat even the business partners... Consider it PTSD — with Socialism being the trauma.