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Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

this.weekinsecurity.com

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Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#11

Post by binaryturtle »

tamimio wrote: post #6

Ad blockers at dns level too, not just browsers. A lot of people don’t even know how to block them, check your parents or kids (or non technical people in general) phone and you will see how they are riddled with ads. I had a dns blocker installed on my parents phones and in around 6hrs it blocked 10k queries from 3 apps only..

I personally also block access by web browsers to non-standard ports (aka not :80 or :443) via an app firewall (Little Snitch here). In this case it would have warned me when the compromised script would have called home to that endpoint on the non-standard port.

Gotta tackle such issues at different places all at once for sure. It's like wearing 5 digital condoms at once. Too bad there's still some leakage somewhere for sure. B)

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#12

Post by Cider9986 »

tamimio wrote: post #6

Ad blockers at dns level too, not just browsers. A lot of people don’t even know how to block them, check your parents or kids (or non technical people in general) phone and you will see how they are riddled with ads. I had a dns blocker installed on my parents phones and in around 6hrs it blocked 10k queries from 3 apps only..

DNS level is more secure but less effective because apps and website can serve the essential content on the same domain as the advertisement. It will also become less effective over time.

YouTube does this, so you need to use a browser-based ad blocker.

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#14

Post by RajT88 »

amelius wrote: post #10
functionmouse wrote: post #2

I have a feeling everyone with understanding of the situation or even a vague malaise opening a news article and being bombarded with popups that intercept their attention knows why ad blockers are needed, and any perceived "discourse" to the contrary is one sided, from the ad agencies and media platforms that largely and subversively direct the narrative. It's getting harder by the day to tell sentiment apart from n…

Nobody wants ads (*) but somehow they are never banned. Makes you wonder, are we living in a democracy or not? (*) shown at inconvenient moments and tracking the user; yellow pages were fine

I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads. These days, good luck getting bipartisan agreement, especially with all the dark money in politics being legalized and normalized.

That said... The modern internet is built off many free services paid for by people who buy stuff from ads. It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear. Hosting costs money.

I could see a dystopia without ads where a government provides free hosting for citizens. That quickly becomes "thought police" when an authoritarian leading head of state comes in. If we pretend like that will not happen, I think we would have a much more wonderful internet.

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#15

Post by amelius »

RajT88 wrote: post #14
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants ads (*) but somehow they are never banned. Makes you wonder, are we living in a democracy or not? (*) shown at inconvenient moments and tracking the user; yellow pages were fine

I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads. These days, good luck getting bipartisan agreement, especially with all the dark money in politics being legalized and normalized. That said... The modern internet is built off many free services paid for by people who buy stuff from ads. It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear. Hosting costs money. I could see…

> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.

Don't you see the problem with that statement? Ads are profitable, and we are paying for them, indirectly, through buying products and services. Adtech takes a chunk of that profit. Therefore, we pay more than we should!

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#16

Post by nashashmi »

Websites being hacked does not necessitate ad block. It necessitates better browser security. The title here is fallacious. I say this in all fairness as someone who uses adblock extensively, where I don't even like cookies being held by ad companies.

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#18

Post by inigyou »

Cider9986 wrote: post #12
tamimio wrote: post #6

Ad blockers at dns level too, not just browsers. A lot of people don’t even know how to block them, check your parents or kids (or non technical people in general) phone and you will see how they are riddled with ads. I had a dns blocker installed on my parents phones and in around 6hrs it blocked 10k queries from 3 apps only..

DNS level is more secure but less effective because apps and website can serve the essential content on the same domain as the advertisement. It will also become less effective over time. YouTube does this, so you need to use a browser-based ad blocker.

Let them eat cake. Setting up that ad proxy stuff is a bunch of work that many websites won't do.

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#19

Post by inigyou »

RajT88 wrote: post #14
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants ads (*) but somehow they are never banned. Makes you wonder, are we living in a democracy or not? (*) shown at inconvenient moments and tracking the user; yellow pages were fine

I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads. These days, good luck getting bipartisan agreement, especially with all the dark money in politics being legalized and normalized. That said... The modern internet is built off many free services paid for by people who buy stuff from ads. It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear. Hosting costs money. I could see…

I don't care. It was better before there were ads. It will be better after there are ads. Most actual useful content isn't monetised, and most monetised content is slop. There is a spectrum between the two endpoints, of course.

Re: Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed

#20

Post by shevy-java »

The sad thing is that we need adblockers in the first place.

Granted, even in the 1990s there were ads; I remember blinking banners and what not. But often the underlying website was still fine as such.

Fast forward some years. Now if you look at e. g. medium.com but many other websites, you are CONSTANTLY bombarded with pointless pop-ups, slide-ins, and pester-naggers. No I do use ublock origin (it works on thorium by default) so I only get very few ads, but many websites just pursue a strategy to piss off visitors. I do not understand this. If you want anyone to read your content, do not pester them at all. Nowadays when a slide-in appears that sneaks through ublock origin, I don't even let ublock origin block it, I just insta-close that tab. Cookie accept banners fall into the similar category, though some add-ons help with that.

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