Another Reason to Block Ads from My Life - Malware

This has been going on for years, and Google can't be bothered to do anything much about it. (They're too busy censoring conservatives, or something.) Ransomware access brokers use Google ads to breach your network

So not only are ads annoying, the way they are served up is dangerous.

A threat actor tracked as DEV-0569 uses Google Ads in widespread, ongoing advertising campaigns to distribute malware, steal victims' passwords, and ultimately breach networks for ransomware attacks.

Over the past couple of weeks, cybersecurity researchers MalwareHunterTeam, Germán Fernández, and Will Dormann have illustrated how Google search results have become a hotbed of malicious advertisements pushing malware.

The latest round of attacks have been going on almost a year. (Or potentially more.) Microsoft started tracking this particular set of bad guys in February of 2022.

The good news is that Google has been removing ads as they are reported and detected.

The bad news is that the threat actors are constantly launching new ad campaigns and new sites, making it a giant game of whack-a-mole, and it doesn't feel like Google is winning.

Of course if they were either less interested in removing conservatives from YouTube, or if they were held liable for some of the bad outcomes, Google might devote more resources to the problem.