A new botnet has been discovered that defrauded the smart TV ad market with infected apps. In total, over a million Android smartphones, as well as Roku devices, were accessing ads without their owners knowing.
How To Easily Make Money During pandemic ? Quite simply by taking advantage of the craze for streaming services and therefore the advertisements displayed on connected TVs. A group of hackers came up with this idea and created a botnet described as one of the most sophisticated of its kind. Cybercriminals have smuggled over a million smartphones Android for televisions in order to collect advertising revenue.
The botnet was spotted by the cybersecurity company Human (formerly White Ops) and called Pareto, after the Pareto principle where 80% of the effects are produced by 20% of the causes. All infected devices were connecting to advertising links on average 650 million times a day without the knowledge of their owners, posing as more than 6,000 models of televisions and connected boxes.
29 Android apps and 36 Roku apps affected
The malware has been distributed for at least a year through 29 applications in the Play Store d’Android. Each device connected every 30 seconds to a command and control (C&C) server to check for new instructions. After identifying the server, Human was also able to spot 36 apps on Roku devices, although these were less active than those on Android.
Human indicates having worked with Google and Roku who removed the offending applications. The full list is available at the end of Human’s technical article. The firm has also transmitted all the information it has to the authorities so that they can arrest those responsible.
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