Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed
The online advertising giant Adform was compromised, allowing hackers to inject malicious code into ads that hijacked users' crypto wallet addresses. The incident serves as a warning about the security risks inherent in online advertising and the utility of ad blockers.
Why it matters
It highlights significant cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the digital advertising supply chain that can directly impact consumer financial security.
Online ads provider Adform was hacked. On July 27, the company began serving ads containing malicious code. The company says in its latest annual report that its serves 1.5 billion ads to people's devices daily.
According to security researcher Kevin Beaumont, who first revealed the incident , some of the code that Adform used to load its ads on its customers' websites was maliciously altered. The code was designed to trigger when it loaded in a victim's web browser.
The malicious code replaced a victim's crypto wallet address in their computer's clipboard with crypto wallet addresses controlled by the hacker. The code replaces the crypto addresses in the clipboard every three seconds, all but guaranteeing that the victim will inadvertently paste in the attacker's crypto wallet address and send their crypto to the hacker instead of its intended destination.
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