Deconstructing Ad Networks for Fun and Profit

Presented at The Eleventh HOPE (2016), July 24, 2016, 5 p.m. (60 minutes)

This talk focuses on an open-source software tool, webXray, which detects the presence of third-party data flows on the web and attributes such flows to the corporations which receive user data. The talk will first describe the challenges, dead ends, and solutions encountered in developing the software so that developers and novices in the audience may understand the nature of the problem domain. Second, the talk will cover how to use the tool to analyze targeted populations of web pages with an emphasis on scaling and cost considerations. Third, the talk will describe findings in three areas: tracking found on medical websites, Chinese websites, and newspaper websites including measures of user exposure to malware-hosting domains embedded in ostensibly trusted websites. The talk will conclude with a theoretical discussion of how those seeking to leverage ad networks to deliver malware may pick the best networks suited to their objectives.

Presenters:

• Timothy Libert
  Timothy Libert is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and a research fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin. His research focuses on privacy-compromising information flows on the web, and he is the author of the open-source software platform webXray. He has published work in The Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, The International Journal of Communication, and The BMJ (British Medical Journal). His work has received international press coverage and he has been interviewed by National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Good Morning America, and other outlets. His publications may be downloaded at his personal website: https://timlibert.me.

Links:

• https://xi.hope.net/schedule.html#-deconstructing-ad-networks-for-fun-and-profit- (Conference Schedule)
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Eleventh HOPE (2016)/The Eleventh HOPE (2016) Deconstructing Ad Networks for Fun and Profit.srt (subtitles)
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Eleventh HOPE (2016)/The Eleventh HOPE (2016) Deconstructing Ad Networks for Fun and Profit.mp4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJNg4iMid8E

Similar Presentations:

• THOTCON 0x9 (2018) / Browser as Botnet
• Black Hat Europe 2019 / Is Your Mental Health for Sale?
• AppSec USA 2014 / Catch me if you can: Building a Web Malware Analyzer using Machine Learning