Comment on Spyware can infect your phone or computer via the ads you see online – report

adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  ≥ What sets Insanet’s Sherlock apart from Pegasus is its exploitation of ad networks rather than vulnerabilities in phones. A Sherlock user creates an ad campaign that narrowly focuses on the target’s demographic and location, and places a spyware-laden ad with an ad exchange. Once the ad is served to a web page that the target views, the spyware is secretly installed on the target’s phone or computer.

  This is the part that makes this newsworthy. Insanet uses the advertising infrastructure to target a specific group or even person, and when the ad is displayed it does not require user interaction to install itself. They’ve developed a zero-click exploit, which is very concerning

  I’m not clear on whether an adblocker will actually protect you from this - some adblockers only prevent the display of the ad in your browser, but the content of the ad is still downloaded with the rest of the webpage information. You might actually need something like Pihole to block ad server addresses so that the content never gets downloaded at all, but that would make any browsing outside your home network dangerous.

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  • furrowsofar@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is the crazy thing about ads. The ad network and site operators should be responsible for making sure both the ads and the people putting up the ads are trustworthy. The reason I now block all ads is this reason. Neither party cares and they are willing to act as a conduit for this stuff. In most other industries orgs are responsible forvtgeir supply chains.

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    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ah, but see that would require actual human attention and judhemebt for the vetting process, which would cost money. Automating the ad selling process is so much better… for the shareholders.

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      • furrowsofar@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        There are plenty of ways. They probably just do not want to do it. Easiest might be only certain allowed formats and all the content must begin the ad networks servers. They could allow more options for vetted business partners.

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  • MasterBuilder@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Any DNS based blocker will filter out anything from URLs at the source, so no data is received. I use AdAway with Magisk. Blocklists are updated regularly.

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  • newIdentity@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Most do both and also block the Javascript of the ad to load.

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