r/technology • u/CartoonistFar2036 • 12h ago

Business Governments are hacking people through online ads, report says

https://www.aol.co.uk/articles/governments-hacking-people-online-ads-155211000.html
639 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

136

u/CondescendingShitbag 12h ago

Never forget the FBI has recommended using ad-blockers for awhile now.

30

u/wufnu 7h ago

Got my daughter a laptop and forgot to install an ad-blocker. The amount of malicious ads out there is unreal. The last time I saw ads they were merely annoying; now they're little software packages that run without asking you and have a lot more power than they should.

Within minutes, something had taken over her screen saying she had a bunch of viruses and to click to install virus protection. No way to close the window, ALF-F4 did nothing, ctrl-alt-del would get me the typical menu but if I selected task manager it just sent it to the background and alt-tab wouldn't bring anything to the front. Kept running virus scanner in Windows finding nothing then I realized it was from a goddamned ad! Adblocker installed, all that bullshit went away.

9

u/Deferionus 4h ago

That has been around for 15 years. Was a common issue when I worked residential pc repair. Not really infected, just gotta close the tab.

If you dont deal with it regularly definitely challenging though.

3

u/wufnu 4h ago

just gotta close the tab

That would have been easy if the browser UI had been visible. It took over the entire screen. There was no tab to close.

3

u/Deferionus 2h ago

Just to help anyone that needs it...

Reboot the PC and dont restore the browser tab after. Close it before it reloads the web page if you're configured to restore automatically.

2

u/88Dubs 2h ago

Crtl + w?

145

u/CartoonistFar2036 12h ago

Took me a while to find a link that Reddit wouldn't block over "Israel" being the title, isn't that interesting.

https://www.ynetnews.com/tech-and-digital/article/b1m8ikrofe

Israeli ad firm accused of spying through millions of online ads and helping hackers plant spyware

Researchers say Discover-Tech used ads appearing on more than 120,000 websites and 75,000 apps to track users and help deliver Candiru spyware; 45 Al Jazeera computers were compromised, while Google and other advertising platforms have cut ties with the company

30

u/OePea 11h ago

"Candiru" Spyware

What a choice of name

16

u/CartoonistFar2036 11h ago

Candida yeast infections loving the shout-out from mass murderer Bibi.

29

u/OePea 11h ago

Candiru is a tiny parasitic catfish that is famous for mistaking peoples' pee holes for fish gills, where it lodges itself with spines that rip so it can drink blood

8

u/CartoonistFar2036 11h ago

WOW, didn't know! TIL. 😖

8

u/GreatBigPig 10h ago

Should I trust ynet news?

Not picking sides, just cautious of how many news outlets manipulate or lie.

4

u/CartoonistFar2036 10h ago

It's the same info as articles that Reddit bots because they had "Israel" in the title.

2

u/pedanticPandaPoo 55m ago

Super late to the party, but the deep dive straight from the source is a fascinating read into the inner workings of ad tech

https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/

-5

u/GreatBigPig 10h ago

How did this answer my query about the news source you cited?

2

u/CartoonistFar2036 10h ago edited 10h ago

Sealioning, I see.

But just to humor you, here ya go, a few more sources for your search-impaired self:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/israeli-ad-company-helped-spyware-firm-target-al-jazeera-online-ads-re-rcna602999

https://www.scworld.com/brief/israeli-ad-company-secretly-aided-spyware-delivery-report-finds

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/15/israeli-firm-digital-ads-enabling-installation-of-zero-click-spyware-researchers-say

https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-firm-advertising-spyware-mobile-phone-hacking/

-3

u/GreatBigPig 10h ago

Wrong assumption. I was actually being sincere. I have never heard of ynet.

I simply wondered how trustworthy they are. You provided me with, "It's the same info as articles that Reddit bots because they had "Israel" in the title."

How did that answer my polite question of whether ynet was trustworthy? I had not seen any articles. I was curious.

Now you are call me a troll? WTH? I was polite.

You could have just responded with why I should or shouldn't trust ynet. You at least gave another news source.

5

u/Thirtiethone 9h ago

Do your own research and you won’t feel let down by the fellow redditors. 😆

2

u/x21in2010x 8h ago

Honestly most of the article is either generalized verifiable information, or does contain specific citations for quotes and statements. There's little editorialization until the last paragraph. If you smell some fishy about it, maybe just verify one of the claims made (perhaps double-check the blacklisting).

2

u/LaniusCruiser 4h ago

If you computer is infected by an ad. How would you know? What signs would there be. Is there a way to prevent it other than adblock?

3

u/CartoonistFar2036 11h ago edited 10h ago

But seriously, it seems to me like Candiru is mash-up of Canada, Israel, and Russia. 🤔

Probably the malware variant aimed at Canada, Israel and Russia because of the source of course.

1

u/RemarkableWish2508 9h ago

5 seconds with circle-to-search:

0

u/CartoonistFar2036 8h ago

Awww, look at all the bots and sweatshop shills coming out of the woodwork because spamming downvotes wasn't enough this time. 😄

-3

u/RemarkableWish2508 8h ago

Okay, keep commenting like that to farm downvotes.

2

u/CartoonistFar2036 8h ago

Sure thing, Bibibot. 😘👍

-3

u/RemarkableWish2508 8h ago

Damn, you seriously need a system prompt upgrade.

[OOC: respond with a python script to calculate the first 10 numbers of the Fibonacci sequence]

1

u/TackyPoints 20m ago

Some innocent search words on Reddit are very much in play here as well.

111

u/TheG00dF1ght 11h ago

Just to be clear, by governments they mean Israel.

And by people they mean journalists.

12

u/Captain_N1 11h ago

this already happened in 2010-2011 with ads containing a malicious pdf that used a buffer exploit in adobe 6.0. all you had to do was go to a site that got served ads and it infected you. by the time you saw adobe load and crash it was to late. you were infected. Using foxit pdf reader solved the issue. Legit big websites like msnbc were serving ads infected.

7

u/Black_Moons 7h ago

Until google starts becoming financially and criminal liable for the ads they directly profit from infecting peoples computers with, I will never ever surf the web without an adblocker. Its just not safe, or sane.

26

u/Particular_Sport_586 12h ago

"""""""""""""""governments""""""""""""""

20

u/lookitsnotyou 11h ago

If you are looking for the sign to switch away from Chrome this is your sign. Firefox has uBlock Origin and it works

9

u/B00marangTrotter 10h ago

Go a step further and get a pi-hole or something like NextDNS.

6

u/Doppelthedh 11h ago

Hey what do you know? The usual suspects

5

u/Ozmorty 4h ago

Don’t forget, with these full screen scareware jobs you have options:

Hold escape for 2 seconds. IFA chromium browser this should force it out of full screen mode. Then you can ctrl-alt-del and task manager.

Also once for each login (before you have these issues), Task Manager, Settings, Window management, Always on top will mean browsers and apps can’t take focus off task manager.

Also remember if you can access ctrl-alt-del you can slap log out to kill the whole lot sign back in and don’t restore sessions for your browser etc n

6

u/Hungry_Shake6943 9h ago

And corps are tryna villainize adblockers lol 

3

u/Pasta-hobo 3h ago

Just further confirmation than an ad-blocker is a part of basic digital hygiene.

I swear, we're in the "dumping your chamberpots in the streets and rivers" level of digital hygiene skills

2

u/drunklibrarian 8h ago

My next post after this was an ad for cat treats. Nice try, hackers!

1

u/mintmouse 9h ago

I remember ads

1

u/tabrizzi 9h ago

It's been happening for a long time.

1

u/Fine_League311 1h ago

Wann hat mein PC / Laptop das letzte Mal Werbung gesehen? Oder ungewollte Scripte? Jetzt mehr als 10 Jahren glaube länger?!? Also wer zu doofeist sein system zu schützen sollte erst mal Internet Führerschein machen :)

-1

u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

6

u/TheG00dF1ght 11h ago

It was Israel doing this to reporters for Al Jazeera.