There is a tinfoil narrative that suggest that entire formats are in bed with intelligence services. It sounds pretty wild, but other zero-click attack vectors have been possible through sabotaging the parsing of file formats. ie. send a message -> hacked. How? the message wasnt even opened. How is, an app like Messenger receives a photo attachment binary, tries to unpack it and in doing so receives an instruction that stops the parser and executes arbitrary instructions.
Tons of SV companies really... it's quite disturbing how obvious the compromise vectors are but big companies and startups alike seem to just allow it with no consideration for the security implications.
I think lots of it has to do with how well the hasbara covers up the scandals from the wider publics perception, combined with the cultural bandwagon of considering them an ally even when their repeated actions say otherwise.
edit: also the idea that they have such good tech and its a pragmatic decision ignores the history of how and who they got it from and the intentions for it. I say this as someone who worked directly with Mellanox for example, before aquisition by Nvidia... I always thought kernel level shims for networking stacks from an Israeli company was dangerous... but the speeds!!!
well yes, that is the surface. it's the surface being created with no recourse from the user side, that is intentional... the tinfoil hat theory is that it is, anyway.
Yeah, but you need to know where to look for it, the average person is never going to be able to afford the amount of tokens that will take to find a bug like this, especially if it was implanted on purpose.
They use ad network to try to target individual user visiting a page (eg you know your target is a male, 60 years old, living in that area, with a few other checks you can almost uniquely identify your target)
Then the ad network delivers a targeted ad that exploits a vulnerability (eg a broken JPEG decoder that, when sent a bad image, allows to run arbitrary code on your machine), and from there you have access to the computer
It’s to do with hiding malware/spyware in an image which ends up in your cache on device. I can’t go much further into details but all this takes is for you to visit a site that serves it via ad network.
Israel has been known to have some sneaky spyware in the past with Pegasus.
How the ad-based spyware actually worked (from the Citizen Lab and Confiant reports):
- It came in through the front door. Discover-Tech ran its own ad-buying platform and was listed as a "certified" vendor by Google and IAB Europe for six years. Nothing was hacked to get in. It bid in ad auctions like any other buyer.
- The ads looked harmless. Plain banners for games, AliExpress deals and an IP-lookup site. Hidden inside each one was a small script that quietly phoned home when the ad loaded.
- Everyone who saw an ad was profiled. The script collected device details, IP addresses and, on many sites, the publisher's own cookies, sometimes including logged-in session tokens. Cookie-syncing with other ad networks built a huge identity graph.
- Only chosen targets got the payload. A gatekeeper server checked each device's ad ID and IP. Most people got nothing back. A selected target got code that handed them off to spyware maker Candiru, and the code was served only once, which made it very hard for researchers to capture.
- The handoff was built to defeat inspection. Encrypted channels, rotating hosting, anti-bot checks and even a fake "Copyright Google" comment to fool human reviewers.
- It worked. At least 45 devices at Al Jazeera were targeted, and spyware was recovered from an infected machine. Its ads also appeared on networks belonging to NATO, the UN, the European Parliament, the ICC and various defence ministries.
- The scale was huge. Billions of bids and ads in nearly 200,000 apps and websites, including Duolingo, Viber, Yahoo Mail, dating apps and period trackers, yet almost no sign of real advertisers or revenue.
Wait what, so there is no content disarm between companies making ads, and the publishers? They can literally push whatever they want? Wild.
Edit:
the TFA answers: "Advertisers or DSPs may run HTML and JavaScript code when an ad is shown to the user." Its wild! I thought the ads are sanitized, go through a CDR of sorts, and whatever javascript is permitted is authored by ad networks, not the buyers. Sheesh. Thats just RCE.
I was looking for this comment. I'm wondering the same. Are ads just iframes that could have js? Therefore this is basically a zero click js (is this the first?) that just happens to be distributed via ads?
> Wait what, so there is no content disarm between companies making ads, and the publishers? They can literally push whatever they want? Wild.
RTB (real-time bidding) does not incentivise publishers to care about what ads are actually being shown to individual users, so long as CPM is maximised.
Looks like it's much worse, they get more information due to exploits, and they can take full control of your machine.
Article on the CitizenLab website: https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targ...
This should have been the OP.
There is a tinfoil narrative that suggest that entire formats are in bed with intelligence services. It sounds pretty wild, but other zero-click attack vectors have been possible through sabotaging the parsing of file formats. ie. send a message -> hacked. How? the message wasnt even opened. How is, an app like Messenger receives a photo attachment binary, tries to unpack it and in doing so receives an instruction that stops the parser and executes arbitrary instructions.
Go to LinkedIn, and check how many ex Unit 8200 (a group you never really quit until you are 50)...work for the Apple iOS dev team...
Tons of SV companies really... it's quite disturbing how obvious the compromise vectors are but big companies and startups alike seem to just allow it with no consideration for the security implications.
I think lots of it has to do with how well the hasbara covers up the scandals from the wider publics perception, combined with the cultural bandwagon of considering them an ally even when their repeated actions say otherwise.
edit: also the idea that they have such good tech and its a pragmatic decision ignores the history of how and who they got it from and the intentions for it. I say this as someone who worked directly with Mellanox for example, before aquisition by Nvidia... I always thought kernel level shims for networking stacks from an Israeli company was dangerous... but the speeds!!!
It's routine for apps like Messenger to pre-download attachments (eg to compute a resized preview of the image etc)
well yes, that is the surface. it's the surface being created with no recourse from the user side, that is intentional... the tinfoil hat theory is that it is, anyway.
1 reply →
With all the AI decompilation going on would it not be possible to find these things in the binary by now?
Yeah, but you need to know where to look for it, the average person is never going to be able to afford the amount of tokens that will take to find a bug like this, especially if it was implanted on purpose.
1 reply →
They use ad network to try to target individual user visiting a page (eg you know your target is a male, 60 years old, living in that area, with a few other checks you can almost uniquely identify your target)
Then the ad network delivers a targeted ad that exploits a vulnerability (eg a broken JPEG decoder that, when sent a bad image, allows to run arbitrary code on your machine), and from there you have access to the computer
Here is a better article https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targ...
https://blog.confiant.com/p/adint-weaponized-ad-tech-for-zer...
https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targ...
If I had to ponder a guess…
It’s to do with hiding malware/spyware in an image which ends up in your cache on device. I can’t go much further into details but all this takes is for you to visit a site that serves it via ad network.
Israel has been known to have some sneaky spyware in the past with Pegasus.
How the ad-based spyware actually worked (from the Citizen Lab and Confiant reports):
- It came in through the front door. Discover-Tech ran its own ad-buying platform and was listed as a "certified" vendor by Google and IAB Europe for six years. Nothing was hacked to get in. It bid in ad auctions like any other buyer.
- The ads looked harmless. Plain banners for games, AliExpress deals and an IP-lookup site. Hidden inside each one was a small script that quietly phoned home when the ad loaded.
- Everyone who saw an ad was profiled. The script collected device details, IP addresses and, on many sites, the publisher's own cookies, sometimes including logged-in session tokens. Cookie-syncing with other ad networks built a huge identity graph.
- Only chosen targets got the payload. A gatekeeper server checked each device's ad ID and IP. Most people got nothing back. A selected target got code that handed them off to spyware maker Candiru, and the code was served only once, which made it very hard for researchers to capture.
- The handoff was built to defeat inspection. Encrypted channels, rotating hosting, anti-bot checks and even a fake "Copyright Google" comment to fool human reviewers.
- It worked. At least 45 devices at Al Jazeera were targeted, and spyware was recovered from an infected machine. Its ads also appeared on networks belonging to NATO, the UN, the European Parliament, the ICC and various defence ministries.
- The scale was huge. Billions of bids and ads in nearly 200,000 apps and websites, including Duolingo, Viber, Yahoo Mail, dating apps and period trackers, yet almost no sign of real advertisers or revenue.
Citizen Lab: https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targ...
Confiant: https://blog.confiant.com/p/adint-weaponized-ad-tech-for-zer...
Citizen Lab also has a shorter executive summary: https://citizenlab.ca/research/exposing-adfection-executive-...
Did you AI generate this? The wording looks suspicious and sure enough, it's flagged by pangram as AI.
I found it to be an excellent, easy-to-read summary.
2 replies →
Wait what, so there is no content disarm between companies making ads, and the publishers? They can literally push whatever they want? Wild.
Edit:
the TFA answers: "Advertisers or DSPs may run HTML and JavaScript code when an ad is shown to the user." Its wild! I thought the ads are sanitized, go through a CDR of sorts, and whatever javascript is permitted is authored by ad networks, not the buyers. Sheesh. Thats just RCE.
I was looking for this comment. I'm wondering the same. Are ads just iframes that could have js? Therefore this is basically a zero click js (is this the first?) that just happens to be distributed via ads?
> Wait what, so there is no content disarm between companies making ads, and the publishers? They can literally push whatever they want? Wild.
RTB (real-time bidding) does not incentivise publishers to care about what ads are actually being shown to individual users, so long as CPM is maximised.
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