Ad Fraud - What beast is that?

I have fascination for all things history and old. Don't know why but I love looking at old pictures, movies and visiting places which have history full of culture. Looking at this picture it reminded me of the early 20th century "Advertising Gold Rush", each billboard presents a picture that is suppose to get your attention just long enough that you remember the brand and hopefully the product too. Throw in a picture of a baby crying, shiny cars or bikes and that's the hook that grabs your attention long enough for you to wonder in your sub-conscious mind.

Now fast forward to a space faring generation we are now given adverts at rocket speed. We can see these adverts all around us from the moment we get up all the way to sleeping we get to see some 3500 adverts minimum. Yes that is out of memory I read a few years ago but if you would like I can find the source too but take my words for the moment.

So Adverts as a medium are all good in terms of the objective they try to achieve for those running them "legitimately", after paying the due price to buy the space for their banner and selling something legitimate. But in the age of digital world there are adversaries out there who can actually make lots of money both from the consumer and businesses just by manipulating a few lines of code or injecting malicious code in the digital ad which can just make lots of noise which is hard to detect.

What does that mean?

It means we can be facilitating bad actors just by being ignorant. Can we imaging telling our kids that we actually are contributing to organised crime by just using our devices? Yeah its hard to explain in layman terms. Let me try and break this down in as simple words as possible so that you (the non-technical) can also explain this to anyone and the technical can add comments if I missed any critical detail by error of course.

<script
? var banner = document.createElement("div");
? banner.innerHTML = '<a  +
? ? '<img src="example-banner.jpg" alt="Example Promotion"></a>';
? document.body.appendChild(banner);
</script>

>
        

Above code is just an example of the number of lines code required to inject malicious script which can make lots of money to organized criminals. Its hard to detect when your main job isn't within cybersecurity domain but I reckon average users will have to become aware of these campaigns as it will start to cost the consumers lots of money either directly or indirectly through compute resource throttling.

Additionally "Ad fraud" is a serious problem that affects the online advertising industry. It undermines the goals of online advertising campaigns and can cause reputational and financial risks for companies. Understanding common types of ad fraud and how to prevent them is crucial for organizations as well because they also rely on online advertising as a lifeline.

The common types of ad fraud, are:

1. cookie stuffing,
2. click fraud,
3. click spamming,
4. click injection,
5. domain spoofing,
6. pixel stuffing,
7. ad injection,
8. ad stacking,
9. geo masking,
10. user agent spoofing,
11. SDK spoofing and
12. install farms.

Each type of the mentioned ad fraud above has a specific way of tricking the ad platform into believing that human users are interacting with the content, ultimately costing more money to the advertiser.

How to prevent these ad frauds?

Preventing ad fraud requires a multi-layered approach, such as using

1- fraud detection tools,

2- monitoring for suspicious activity, and

3- implementing strict advertising policies.

The recent Vastflux ad fraud operation is just another reminder of the constant evolution of cyber threats and the need for organizations to stay vigilant and implement a comprehensive security strategy to protect against a wide range of adversaries.

In summary, while the history of Advertising is fascinating in the present and coming days we will be faced with ever more clever methods used by adversaries to make easy/quick buck. Ad fraud is a serious problem that affects the online advertising industry today but in future I believe it will be as bad as phishing campaigns are today. It's important for organizations to understand the different types of ad fraud and how to prevent them in order to stay ahead of the competition at the very least given the turmoil we see with big organisations laying off many employees, "every little helps". It is also crucial to keep in mind that the cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, and new types of attacks are always emerging, such as the Vastflux operation, and having a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity is necessary to protect against a wide range of adversaries. I hope you enjoyed reading this and I would love to hear from you if you have any questions or suggestions. For students or individuals looking to change career as always DM myself and I am happy to guide you through the process of becoming a cybersecurity expert.