Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by benj111 » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #15

RajT88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

So you are paying more than you should for a loaf of bread because your local shop is making a profit? because if you went to the factory you could buy the same loaf for less? Of course you could make the bread yourself for even less because the factory is making a profit, and grow the wheat yourself for even less because the farmer is making a profit.

You are not 'paying more than you should'. Not least because there is no price you 'should' be paying. Further I'm not sure how you imagine this working? The retailer gets to decide prices or not? They get to decide if they advertise or not? The advertiser's have competition? The retailers? Retailers are presumably choosing to advertise because they think it's worth it, thus it is? You are free to choose to buy those products, that will feed into their decision whether and how to advertise.

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

#22

Post by shevy-java » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #13

Browsers should not have access to the clipboard.

That depends. For my local use I want to access everything.

For external situations I agree. No clue why browsers started to sniff after people. I blame Google for that.

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

#23

Post by shevy-java » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #17

jimt1234 wrote: post #13

Browsers should not have access to the clipboard.

It's you versus Google on that one. Who will win?

Well, it's not just him.

It's Google versus Mankind.

Mankind will eventually prevail against Evil. Google pissed off too many people now, you only need to look at reddit's degoogle subreddit.

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

#24

Post by cyanclouds » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

Finance and Media = annoying ass industries

Think of a typical news site with millions of ads flying in as you try to read - they are the causers of this shit ad world

Look what happened to YouTube after the news showed up there.

Look at the clusterfuck that is housing and banking.

Compare how any other vertical is ran by the main players vs Finance and Media - the two most shittily ran industries in the West.

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

#25

Post by dabbz » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #20

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…

My least favorite ones are the ones that fit in the rails to the left and right of the content that scroll with you. You can't click anywhere without an accidental ad click. Using any device without ublock reminds me just how much better life is with it...

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

#26

Post by xkcd-sucks » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #7

werds wrote: post #4

Are the crypto addresses known/recorded anywhere? would be interesting to see on the blockchain how much was stolen this way.

The code in question is here: https://pastebin.com/raw/mc7psaNF It appears to be normal Adform code plus two appended chunks at the end. Bitcoin: bc1qmplgt0hcg62jc2guz86wn2sms7tqrsulkkrrls Ethereum: 0xE7983E69df17079ADb0aD7b3458488Cac0dBc573 TRON: TW4AgGnDc2Pk6YAynCtjCKzoKYWPg7nJe (?) Edit: Activity for those addresses: ~$110k bitcoin https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qmplgt0... ~$55k in ETH https:…

It's absolutely nuts that there's so much volume of low effort cryptocurrency transfers that replacing clipboard contents with a different wallet address on people not blocking ads on a specific ad network nets anything at all

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

#27

Post by voxleone » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #16

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.

>>Websites being hacked does not necessitate ad block

Their users do.

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

#28

Post by tgv » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #13

Browsers should not have access to the clipboard.

Nor USB devices, nor the screen size, nor ... They can access way too many parts of the OS. But almost nobody cares, as long as they have their shiny feeds and videos.

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

#29

Post by worldthruword » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #16

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.

CrowdStrike Outage means we need better Windows.

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

#30

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #23

inigyou wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's you versus Google on that one. Who will win?

Well, it's not just him. It's Google versus Mankind. Mankind will eventually prevail against Evil. Google pissed off too many people now, you only need to look at reddit's degoogle subreddit.

[deleted]