Rogue ads circulating in the wild target browser users

According to the FBI, rogue ads have been circulating in the wild and have become a problem for internet users. These malicious advertisements vary from pop-ups, spinning banners, and redirects that could be annoying and potentially hostile for many users.

The federal law enforcement agency warned users regarding these fake ads that impersonate legitimate ones and redirect targets to unknown and dangerous websites.

 

The rogue ads presented themselves as familiar entities inside popular search engines users utilise daily.

 

The FBI explained that the malicious ads appear as regular search engine advertisements. In addition, users could find these seemingly not harmful ads at the top of Bing or Google searches.

Furthermore, most of these ads are sometimes labelled as ‘Sponsored’ depending on the browser used for doing searches. Some researchers also stated that the ads could contain malware or other harmful content.

Cybercriminals have also paid for some ads to impersonate authentic products by using similar domain names and linking fake web pages resembling the spoofed businesses’ official pages.

Some rogue ads impersonate finance-related websites, especially crypto exchange platforms. These malicious sites appear as official exchange platforms and prompt users to provide their login credentials and financial information.

Currently, numerous identified fraudulent ads have already executed their attacks. Some of them have used Google Ads to target users seeking well-known software. Some software products include MSI Afterburner, Malwarebytes, Audacity, Grammarly, and Slack.

In a related campaign, the IcedID botnet actors were executing an SEO poisoning strategy to deceive browser users into accessing sites that lead to downloading malware. The attackers used keywords such as Thunderbird, AnyDesk, Discord, Adobe, the IRS, and Brave Browser to hijack their targets.

The rogue ads issue is still a significant problem for researchers, consumers, and authorities. Cybercriminals have continuously exploited this strategy since it provides them with efficient results in their attacks. Therefore, search engine users should be cautious in accessing ads, as most are malicious, especially on suspicious websites.