Attention-grabbing images of bruised and battered celebrities, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, are being used to funnel millions of people to bogus investment sites.
A sophisticated scam advertising group that times its attacks to coincide with popular holidays is suspected to be behind a barrage of disturbing Google ads showing bloodied fake images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Jerome Dangu, a global computer security expert, said the ads had the hallmarks of belonging to a malvertising group nicknamed eGobbler. The group was named after a gobbler after it was responsible for another malicious advertising campaign around Thanksgiving seven years ago. “We have tens of millions of people that saw the ads … so you end up with maybe a million people that got to that page.”Dangu said eGobbler was probably able to advertise via Google using a Trojan horse technique, first building a reputation as a genuine advertiser by posting real ads.
The spokesperson said Google bad actors were becoming more sophisticated and achieving a greater reach, evolving their tactics in an attempt to evade detection. This includes a technique called cloaking, where Google reviewers are shown different content than what appears for the person subsequently viewing the published ad online.
“The reason they target the US holidays is because they know that these tech companies are based in the US, and so there’s less attention ,” he said.Although the ads ran on many different websites, including Australian news outlets, Dangu said they all originated from Google, which serves up ads to many third-party websites. He said Google was a prime target for major scam ad attacks because of its dominance of the global digital ad supply.
“We have raised a number of concerns directly with Google and are in active discussions with them to rectify the increase of inappropriate advertising through programmatic ad marketplaces,” a Nine spokesperson said.“Like most major publishers, Nine utilises programmatic advertising which automatically serves digital advertising to readers. The ad in question was not approved by Nine, has no place on our platforms, and does not reflect the rigorous editorial standards that we uphold.
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