The Ads injectors είναι ανεπιθύμητες εφαρμογές που εισάγουν νέες διαφημίσεις ή να αντικαθιστούν αυτές που ήδη υπάρχουν. Το malware continues to infect the internet for over a year, and Google with a study published, wants to show us how widespread they are.
Today, the company released details from a study conducted with the partnership two universities (UC Berkley and Santa Barbara) and reveals some disturbing facts.
According to Google, around 5,5% unique IP addresses (imagine the number in millions of users) visiting Google's pages from Ad injectors. About 5,1% of them use Windows and 3,4% uses Mac (the security myth goes to Mac).
Researchers have found that over 50.000 browser extensions and 34.000 software applications take control of browsing and have Ad injectors. 30% of these apps steals account credentials, records searches, or user activity in general, and submits it to third parties.
You will remember the software Superfish of Lenovo we mentioned in February. Well, although Lenovo seems to have dropped it, Superfish has left its mark. There is a Google survey in 3,9% of cases. Although Superfish can not provide ads by itself, it provides a library containing ad companies using malware.
Google also reports, according to TNW, that Ad injectors have hit 3000 major companies such as Sears, Wal-Mart, Target and Ebay that are seeing their ads replaced by unauthorized ones. Often, these companies don't know anything is wrong, as advertisers can't usually tell when there's malware in the computer you.
Google has already taken action to fight Ad injectors. For example, the company banned 192 Chrome Extensions, which infected about 14 million users. She also improved her tools for recognizing unwanted software, and at the same time informed the advertisers who may have been affected by the scams.
You can read the full study at Google's research page.
