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Crooks Created 28 Fake Ad Agencies To Disguise Massive Malvertising Campaign (bleepingcomputer.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the under-the-radar dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: A group of cyber-criminals created 28 fake ad agencies and bought over 1 billion ad views in 2017, which they used to deliver malicious ads that redirected unsuspecting users to tech support scams or sneaky pages peddling malware-laden software updates or software installers. The entire operation -- codenamed Zirconium -- appears to have started in February 2017, when the group started creating the fake ad agencies which later bought ad views from larger ad platforms. These fake ad agencies each had individual websites and even LinkedIn profiles for their fake CEOs. Their sole purpose was to interface with larger advertising platforms, appearing as legitimate businesses. Ad security company Confiant, the one who discovered this entire operation, says ads bought by this group reached 62% of ad-monetized websites on a weekly basis. All in all, Confiant believes that about 2.5 million users who've encountered Zirconium's malicious ads were redirected to a malicious site, with 95% of the victims being based in the U.S.

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprised. by YukariHirai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why I use an adblocker, and am not moved by any given website's pleas for me to deactivate it for their site.

    1. Re:Not surprised. by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wouldn't mind internet ads if they weren't so damned obnoxious. If it were just a plain .gif or something similar like a small image and a blurb of text, I probably wouldn't care about them at all or even bother blocking them. I'm not going to click on them or give them any thought, but I'll tolerate their presence as a way for a website to make some money.

      However, its the auto-play audio or video and the hideously massive blob of javascript that can bring multiple cores to a grinding halt for prolonged moments. It's the massive banner ads and side bars the obscure the content that a I care about and their seeming ability to break my experience with random focus requests and an insistence of tracking my across every site that I visit while eating just as much or more data and bandwidth as the content I'm there to see. Its the malicious ads running little programs to use my CPU cycles to mine for cryptocurrencies or that even try to infect my machine in other ways. Fuck all of that and everything else about them as well.

      Build a system that makes it impossible for ads to be annoying in the ways above, or I'm not turning off the adblocker either.

  2. A fake ad agency? That placed ads? by No+Longer+an+AC · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems to me the ad agency was very real and they were doing what ad agencies do. I worked for an ad agency briefly. It was a fascinating experience but those people are experts at twisted thinking. Serving you malware is just a part of these very real ad agencies business plan.

    Ad agencies are supposed to influence you - or at least convince businesses that if they pay you they can influence your customers.

    “The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.”
      David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

    That sounds terribly sexist, but I'm pretty sure Mad Men don't give a shit. They just have to imprint their brand in your head. And then beat the consumer with it so it becomes unthinkable that they might even consider a different brand.

    Coca Cola - it's simply the Rolls Royce of fizzy drinks! Wait, what? Shut up and buy it.