Cybercriminals Use Google Ads to Deploy Malware

 

Hackers are utilizing the Google Ads service more consistently than ever before to transmit malware. As soon as the victims click the download link on the threat actors’ fake versions of the official websites, trojanized software is distributed. 
Grammarly, MSI Afterburner, Slack, Dashlane, Malwarebytes, Audacity, Torrent, OBS, Ring, AnyDesk, Libre Office, Teamviewer, Thunderbird, and Brave are some of the companies impersonated in these operations.
Raccoon Stealer, a modified variant of Vidar Stealer, and the IcedID loader are two examples of malware propagating to victims’ systems. As a result, anyone looking for reliable software on a site with no active ad blocker will see commercials first and be more inclined to click on them because they closely resemble the search result.
Threat actors use a method in that phase to get beyond Google’s automatic checks. If Google determines that the launch site is malicious, the operation is blocked and the advertisements are withdrawn. The trick, according to Guardio and Trend Micro, is to send users who click on the advertisement to a malicious site imitating the software project from a relevant but innocuous site made by the threat actor.
Vermux, a threat group, was discovered employing a significant number of masquerAds websites

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