Cybercriminals use cookie stuffing to win money through ad fraud.īy using fake ad blockers, cybercriminals can earn commission on purchases made on sites stuffed with the cookies, Meshkov said. In this technique-which has been used since the internet’s early days–a website or browser extension adds extra information to a user’s cookie so it looks like more people clicked on an affiliate ad than actually did. Rather than legitimately block ads on websites-the obvious purpose of this type of browser extension–the malicious blockers perform what’s called “cookie stuffing,” Meshkov said. Researcher Andrey Meshkov from rival ad blocker maker AdGuard discovered that the extensions “AdBlock” and “uBlock” found in the store were fraudulent and alerted users in a blog post.
Google has removed two malicious ad blockers from its Chrome Web Store after a researcher discovered they were carrying out ad fraud and deceived Chrome users by using names of legitimate and popular blockers.
