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FWIW, front running[1] Google ads, and to a lesser extent Bing ads, is big money. At Blekko we ran into these people all the time. What they wanted was to send
by ChuckMcM 6y ago
FWIW, front running[1] Google ads, and to a lesser extent Bing ads, is big money. At Blekko we ran into these people all the time.
What they wanted was to send the search query that the user had typed into Google to us, and have our advertising partners provide an Ad, and they would inject it ahead of Google's ads.
For which they would share the revenue that the Ad partner was paid 50/50 with us. And for this service they said our cut would be $10K - $20K per week.
The funny part was they required to be notified immediately if Google changed its page layout because, well they needed to blend in or the game was up. I wrote a grease monkey script to change the page background after ads had loaded on a Google search engine results page (SERP) and yup, you could see their ad sitting there.
Of course Google would catch on, especially when people complain that Google was showing them ads for inappropriate products or what not and Google would investigate and track down the front doing the injecting. The half life of these fronts seemed to be 6 months to a year depending on how greedy they got. The people behind the front would vanish and pop up under a new name somewhere else.
The sad thing, for me, is that when you put your infosec hat on you realize its super easy to phish an unsuspecting someone by sending fake mail from a friend for a cool backdrop or display toy. Once they are on the hook you can wait until they search for something on Google and inject a very nice result for them to click on that stops off at your drive by zero day site to pick up your payload and its off to the races.
[1] From the article -- "... then proceeded to quietly inject ads inside Google and Bing search results."
- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoHow long until Google just stops allowing Chrome extensions to run on their domains
- wolco 6y agoYou should earn an idea bounty.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoWhat floors is me is that Google is so lax on fixing the Chrome Web Store, when they're literally distributing things that hijack their primary business, search and ads. How is Chrome Web Store malware not a five-alarm fire that sends Sundar Pichai down into the cubicle farm to find someone's head to stick on a pike? Like, this should be THE issue that Google cares about. ...And malware that hijacks your search engine on Chrome has been all but unpoliced for most of the past decade.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoIt is difficult to understand. I know that when I worked there the way advancement worked (the only way to get a raise) was that you shipped a "new" thing. People who just fixed bugs never got recognition company wide, but people who shipped a new thing FULL of bugs? They got to go up on stage with Larry and be held up as some who gets things done. (and get promoted) That had started changing by 2010. They at least had an official way to recognize one person a quarter, if they were nominated, for doing solid infrastructure work.
- techslave 6y ago> when people complain that Google was showing them ads for inappropriate products or what not and Google would investigate and track down the front doing the injecting google listens to complaints? i suspect they discover these things internally, not from user reports.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoThe challenge of discovering it internally is you have to have the injector installed and it has to fire on queries. I believe Google is sensitive to complaints here due to legal jeopardy. That I am aware of, Google has been forbidden from showing advertisements from Canadian pharmacy's and Payday Loan vendors. Both things which pay well for clicks and you're basic slimeball Adtech guy is going to inject into Google pages when they think they might get a click.