An investigative report reveals that new spyware can slip in unseen through online ads—and there is currently no defense against it. So not only that online ads are intrusive and can infect devices through malware, they can also be used for spying.
An adblocker in this day and time is must for internet usage.
Or offload them at the DNS so they dont even get to the device in the first instance.
I do so love my Pihole. I forget how many ads are all over websites until I load up some site on a machine outside of my network.
I need to get a new modem/router. My arris that came with my fiber internet screws up my ability to remote connect to Plex and it won’t let me set up a pihole.
you need to put the arris into bridge mode which should turn port 1 into a WAN port which you can plug a real router into.
So bridge then plug my nighthawk into it and run it all through the nighthawk?
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I’ll give it a shot! Thanks!
dns-based solutions don’t get them all.
Probably worth having multiple layers of defense
One thing I like about this particular layer of defense is that it gives you more insight into the activities of the software and operating systems you’re using. The statistics they provide (I use Adguard Home) have proven very useful to me on several occasions .
No solution is perfect but could a DNS based solution with a privacy browser is as good as I can get on mobile devices without not connecting to the internet at all.
I use(and recommend) both for the best user experience.UBlock origin’s element zapper feature has changed my life.
and there is currently no defense against it.
Don’t load ads. There, problem solved.
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It takes some savviness to do this. Most people aren’t techy enough.
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it’s scary for people who don’t understand it. i would never ask my parents to get it because i know that any errors or whatever their computer will get will get blamed on the extension and get blamed on me.
You wouldn’t ask your boomer parents to block ads that will likely get them to install viruses or get scammed? They are easily the demographic that would benefit the most from ublock.
You’ve clearly never had to deal with the “you touched my computer 3 years ago and now it won’t turn on. Why did you break my computer” family members. One of the number one pieces of advice for people just starting in IT is to never work on family members’ computers. Because as soon as you agree to fix something, you’re now the person to blame when something stops working. Because “it worked fine the last time you touched it, and now it’s broken. Clearly I didn’t do anything to break it, so it must have been you” is a scarily common train of thought.
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This and don’t ever tell co-workers your into computers either. They will ask for say, laptop recommdations. So because you like them, you do a little research and send them some links. 6 months later they’ll come back asking for another recommendation because they didn’t buy anything when they last asked! This has happened to me more times than I care to think about. Totally annoys me.
After my mom almost fell for a few iPhone adverts, I put a piHole on her home network and that solved most issues. I don’t have to teach her how to enable and disable ublock origin when her websites don’t render correctly.
Thing is most people are unaware of the harmful nature of ads and don’t care to do anything to block them.
I swear 90% of the world not aware of adblocker.
And then 9% out of that remaining 10% just can’t be bothered to install them for some insane reason.
“I don’t mind the ads…”
“WHY THE FUCK NOT, ARE YOU EVEN HUMAN?”
Exactly! Can’t understand how do so many people tolerate ads.
I think I heard that usage on desktop is something like 1 in 4, which is pretty good. Mobile is another world altogether, since it requires different browsers that support adblocking and then accessing websites through the browser instead of the app for the website, which many users would definitely prefer to use.
There is no defense?
Imagine a world without Adblocker, haha!
There is no defence they will tell you about. No ADs for you means less money for them
“We did nothing, and are all out of ideas.”
Are we back in 1995? This should be common knowledge.
Blocking ads to avoid their malware was the #1 reason to have adblocker.
I’ve heard a surprising number of people say not only do they like ads, they like targeted ads. My brain can’t wrap my head around this.
Actually it’s not really a problem anymore. Browsers have become probably the most secure softwares on your computer.
0days for browsers are crazy expensive. Unless you’re targeted by state actors you have nothing to worry about.
Did you really just say this in a topic about this actual thing happening?
I know, but have you read the article?
There’s a 0day in chrome rn that let’s a picture take over your comp
And there always will be, but for normal people living in a democracy, that’s not a problem since it’s a state trojan
I didn’t realize democracies were malware-proof.
This is literally about a Trojan that is only sold to governments.
I don’t like it and it definitely can be abused, but it’s not as bad as in Mexico
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As long as you aren’t a state target
Sure did.
Then you would now that it’s a state Trojan just like Pegasus and that exactly such a 0 day that is being sold for large amounts of money.
Edit: actually it doesn’t, but Insanet is a company that sells state Trojans.
And you’re trusting everything an article says about a virus that says there’s no solution?
What’s to stop a black hat buying this to steal identities?
What’s to stop one of the coders from leaking it? Or a black hat leaking it?
What about someone targeting an incorrect target and by doing so it ends up in the hands of someone more nefarious?Hackers and black markets do what they want.
Can’t afford it? Steal it.Actually I hope it gets leaked because that would mean it will gets fixed.
Also im pretty against state Trojans and such, but as long as it makes money.
And what’s stopping someone from leaking it? It’s not particularly illegal to sell exploits and leaking exploits owned by someone is illegal. Also they won’t sell it for free and browser exploits are really expensive. I talking about at least half a million dollars.
There is no solution, because nobody except the ones who made it know how it works and its not public.
browsers have become probably the most secure softwares on your computer.
No, no they did not.
The FBI recommends using an ad blocker for precisely this reason.
And then companies like YouTube force you to unblock them.
What? YouTube can’t force me to do shit.
They have blocked users in the past from seeing any videos until their adblocker it removed
You still have the option of closing the tab and moving on with life, or digging in to see if there’s another way around it.
Closing the tab and moving on with life is what I do when a Twitter login prompt or paywall appears. I’ve often thought it would be better for me to unblock ads, at least on timewasting sites like Youtube, just so that I get pissed off by the ads and close the tab, making it easier to stop wasting time.
I had been watching youtube on my phone using ublock origin on Firefox, but since youtube started this shit I have shifted permanently to newpipe.
We need to go a step further. Have Congress ban internet ads as a matter of national security. Just let me short Google and Facebook stock first.
Never going to happen, the USA is a nation built on ads.
This is probably why we have $1T in credit card debt… at least one reason.
Ads?
Yes. People are constantly being manipulated to think they need a bunch of stuff they don’t need, so they spend money they don’t have.
Really wish this would happen! Even though I know that this wish would never come true.
Defense against it
- uBlock Origin
- NextDNS (I highly recommend this to everyone because you can easily get it for mobile devices and block ads served over mobile networks)
- PiHole
- Plenty of other options
But if corporate media reported on ways to block ads, it’d eat into their own bottom line, so I can understand their choice to skirt the whole “ads are blockable with some level of effort” conversation.
I’ve been blocking online ads for nearly the entirety of my multi-decade usage of the internet, to the point where seeing them now is actually quite jarring. The fact that they’re now a prime vector for malware and spyware/capitalist surveillance just one-ups the decision to block them just for the annoyance factor.
Yea, that’s not new. Malware in ads has been around for like a decade. None of the major ad providers have given zero fucks about it so an ad blocker is mandatory and with Google trying to make ad blocking harder to impossible it’s only a matter of time until some major issues with this malware happens.
But now they being used for targeting devices by Spyware! Another reason to hate ads.
AdGuard DNS for android :)
Yes! And ublock origin on Firefox. And I use newpipe with sponsor block for youtube. Not seen an ad in ages. Ads are a cybersecurity threat no doubt.
For YouTube, I use ReVanced Extended, it has Sponsor Block, Return Dislikes Back and an Ad Block. (Btw it’s a fork of a fork)
Honestly, setting up revanced seems a little too much work to me. So I use newpipe which I find much easier to set up.
Did you trying using the default patches?
Fact is, I am lazy. Reading the long list of things to do to patch the app and to keep it updated put me off so I didn’t try.
People read the list???
Yes, I read the instructions for patching the app.
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This is using some vulnerability in iOS. I’m an Android and Linux guy, but let’s hope Apple quickly finds the bug and fixes it.And fuck that agency for not alerting Apple and instead profiting from it. And fuck the Israeli government for enabling them.Edit: I misread, supposedly this is miraculously able to target every device.
Even better: Thanks to ad tracking you can show specific malware to a specific cohort of people. Want to get spyware on every computer in DC? Just sign up for our ad program!
This sort of creepitude isn’t even specific to online ads.
You know postal junk mail? The “direct marketing” companies that enable it will cheerfully sell you a list of the home addresses of people meeting any demographic characteristics you want.
Do you have reason to want a list of 18-25-year-old gay men in the Boston area, widowed Asians in San Francisco, or military veterans in Oklahoma City? With their names, ages, and their home addresses?
They can sell you one, perfectly legally, and it’s not even that expensive.
From the article:
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.
If they’re using ads on a web page to install spyware, then they’re most definitely exploiting vulnerabilities—unless they’re showing the user a ‘do you want to install XYZ?’, in which case this isn’t newsworthy at all. Ads aren’t some magical thing that can just go around installing shit silently, so I don’t know wtf the article is going on about, but it doesn’t make sense.
Edit: The Register seems to have a more sensible take on it: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/16/insanet_spyware/
Apple released an update day before yesterday, and another today.
And still websites are pissed that I block ads. Websites, the adblocker is not there to annoy you, it is there to protect me from your foolishness and lazyness when it comes to weed out bad actors.
And when websites demand I turn off the adblocker, I just close it.
Unity also purchased a company last year that was notorious for turning a blind eye to malvertisers
