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Generate Fraudulent Advertising Revenue
An adversary could seek to generate fraudulent advertising revenue from mobile devices, for example by triggering automatic clicks of advertising links without user involvement.
Procedure Examples
Name | Description |
---|---|
Agent Smith |
Agent Smith shows fraudulent ads to generate revenue.[1] |
Gooligan | |
HummingBad |
In July 2016, HummingBad generated more than $300,000 per month in revenue from installing fraudulent apps and displaying malicious advertisements.[3] |
HummingWhale |
HummingWhale generates revenue by displaying fraudulent ads and automatically installing apps. When victims try to close the ads, HummingWhale runs in a virtual machine, creating a fake ID that allows the perpetrators to generate revenue.[4] |
Judy |
Judy uses infected devices to generate fraudulent clicks on advertisements to generate revenue.[5] |
SimBad |
SimBad generates fraudulent advertising revenue by displaying ads in the background and by opening the browser and displaying ads.[6] |
Triada |
Triada can redirect ad banner URLs on websites visited by the user to specific ad URLs.[7][8] |
Zen |
Mitigations
Mitigation | Description |
---|---|
Application Vetting |
References
- A. Hazum, F. He, I. Marom, B. Melnykov, A. Polkovnichenko. (2019, July 10). Agent Smith: A New Species of Mobile Malware. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
- Check Point Research Team. (2016, November 30). More Than 1 Million Google Accounts Breached by Gooligan. Retrieved December 12, 2016.
- Dan Goodin. (2016, July 7). 10 million Android phones infected by all-powerful auto-rooting apps. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
- Dan Goodin. (2017, January 23). Virulent Android malware returns, gets >2 million downloads on Google Play. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
- CheckPoint. (2017, May 25). The Judy Malware: Possibly the largest malware campaign found on Google Play. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
- Elena Root, Andrey Polkovnichenko. (2019, March 13). SimBad: A Rogue Adware Campaign On Google Play. Retrieved November 21, 2019.
- Lukasz Siewierski. (2019, June 6). PHA Family Highlights: Triada. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
- Kivva, A. (2016, June 6). Everyone sees not what they want to see. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
- Siewierski, L. (2019, January 11). PHA Family Highlights: Zen and its cousins . Retrieved July 27, 2020.