- Jun 9, 2013
- 6,720
A major new threat actor, dubbed NoTrove, has been seen delivering millions of scam ads, undermining and siphoning money from the digital advertising industry.
According to RiskIQ, NoTrove uses advanced automation techniques to deliver scam ads from millions of different domain names to stay ahead of detection and takedown efforts. NoTrove was so effective that one of the group’s pages ranked as one of the internet’s most visited pages for one day, the security firm noted in a report.
“The online ad scams work by serving up attractive but disingenuous ads on legitimate websites,” the firm explained. “The ads might offer bogus surveys or free software upgrades, as examples. When someone clicks on the ad, however, the scammer’s software then re-directs the user’s clicks and traffic toward various locations across the internet.”
Ad scammers like NoTrove profit from the demand for eyeballs, participating in traffic affiliate programs or selling traffic to traffic buyers (brokers). End users though are often surprised by the ad they are seeing and don’t even know how they got it. As ad scammers increase, the likelihood consumers will implement ad blockers as a way to avoid bogus ads increases as well. Also, beyond the annoyance factor, ad scams can be used to download potentially unwanted programs and can redirect users to unwanted places.
Full Article. NoTrove Threat Actor Emerges with Millions of Scam Ads
According to RiskIQ, NoTrove uses advanced automation techniques to deliver scam ads from millions of different domain names to stay ahead of detection and takedown efforts. NoTrove was so effective that one of the group’s pages ranked as one of the internet’s most visited pages for one day, the security firm noted in a report.
“The online ad scams work by serving up attractive but disingenuous ads on legitimate websites,” the firm explained. “The ads might offer bogus surveys or free software upgrades, as examples. When someone clicks on the ad, however, the scammer’s software then re-directs the user’s clicks and traffic toward various locations across the internet.”
Ad scammers like NoTrove profit from the demand for eyeballs, participating in traffic affiliate programs or selling traffic to traffic buyers (brokers). End users though are often surprised by the ad they are seeing and don’t even know how they got it. As ad scammers increase, the likelihood consumers will implement ad blockers as a way to avoid bogus ads increases as well. Also, beyond the annoyance factor, ad scams can be used to download potentially unwanted programs and can redirect users to unwanted places.
Full Article. NoTrove Threat Actor Emerges with Millions of Scam Ads
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