{"id":21836,"date":"2023-04-24T16:10:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T00:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/04\/24\/news-15567\/"},"modified":"2023-04-24T16:10:49","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T00:10:49","slug":"news-15567","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/04\/24\/news-15567\/","title":{"rendered":"Adult content malvertising scheme leads to clickjacking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Malwarebytes&rsquo; researchers have found a malvertising scheme that leads to clickjacking.<\/p>\n<p>Clickjacking is a form of ad fraud which is also referred to as click fraud or click spam. It is a practice performed by certain dubious advertising networks, where they sometimes use automated programs&mdash;from simple to sophisticated bots and botnets&mdash;to interact with advertisements online. But it can also be done by tricking legitimate users into clicking ads, visiting pages, and (in some cases) creating fake form submissions.<\/p>\n<p>Ad fraud means that the advertiser pays the referrer or the advertising network to show their ads to interested visitors. In reality, the criminal doesn&rsquo;t care who actually clicks or whether they are interested, as long as the money keeps coming their way.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<h2>The campaign<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">To start things up,&nbsp;visitors are lured to several fake blogs about topics they might find interesting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file81335_264368_e.png\" alt=\"the actual blog\" width=\"944\" height=\"574\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" \/><em>This is how the actual blog looks<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The original blog however is hidden by an overlay showing blurred explicit content and a button asking the visitor to confirm they are 18+ and asking if they want to enter the website. We have seen a few different overlays on the same website, so there could some fingerprinting involved. Below are a few examples:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file20308_264368_e.png\" alt=\"example of overlay 1\" width=\"696\" height=\"727\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file70269_264368_e.png\" alt=\"overlay button version 2\" width=\"429\" height=\"332\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Whichever one the visitor sees, clicking the button does nothing other than registering&nbsp;a click on an advertisement. However, that does help the cybercriminals set up this clickjacking scheme.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file91921_264368_e.png\" alt=\"advertisement targeting Dutch audience\" width=\"524\" height=\"449\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Above is an example of an advertisement shown to a Dutch IP and, below, a screenshot of the Google ad that was presented to a Canadian IP address.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file1942_264368_e.png\" alt=\"full link to the advertisement shown to a Canadian visitor\" width=\"269\" height=\"164\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is the link behind the&nbsp;version you can see here:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file53443_264368_e.gif\" alt=\"overlay version 3\" width=\"1135\" height=\"713\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" \/><em>Dragging the button allows the visitor to see where the click will take them<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The code behind these attacks is obfuscated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/easset_upload_file83086_264368_e.png\" alt=\"obfuscated javascript\" width=\"756\" height=\"635\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In this case there is no imminent danger for the website visitor. It is just wasted money for the advertiser. So, if you run into one of these, don&rsquo;t make them any richer by clicking that 18+ button.<\/p>\n<p>If you are spending money on advertising it is worth looking at what you get for the money your are spending. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessofapps.com\/ads\/ad-fraud\/research\/ad-fraud-statistics\/\" target=\"_blank\">research carried out by BusinessOfApps<\/a> the total cost of ad fraud in 2022 was around $81 billion, and is predicted to increase to $100 billion by 2023.<\/p>\n<p>If the spending and return on investment are non-transparent, advertisers can also look at solutions that can significantly reduce their advertising costs. You can try <a href=\"https:\/\/spideraf.com\/media\/press-releases\/spider-af-launches-new-freemium-ad-fraud-prevention-solution-for-google-ads-platform\" target=\"_blank\">some<\/a> for free for up to 5,000 paid clicks per month on the Google Ads platform.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Malwarebytes removes all remnants of ransomware and prevents you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/business\/contact-us\/\" class=\"blue-cta-bttn\">TRY NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/adult-content-malvertising-scheme-leads-to-clickjacking\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<table cellpadding=\"10\">\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" align=\"left\">\n<p>Categories: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/category\/news\" rel=\"category tag\">News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tags: 18+<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  malvertising<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  Google ads<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  clickjacking<\/p>\n<p>Malwarebytes&#8217; researchers have discovered a malvertising scheme that uses adult lures for clickjacking purposes.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">\n<p><b>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/adult-content-malvertising-scheme-leads-to-clickjacking\" title=\"Adult content malvertising scheme leads to clickjacking\">Read more&#8230;<\/a>)<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/04\/adult-content-malvertising-scheme-leads-to-clickjacking\">Adult content malvertising scheme leads to clickjacking<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\">Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[29206,20894,10529,10531,32],"class_list":["post-21836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-29206","tag-clickjacking","tag-google-ads","tag-malvertising","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}