Citizen Lab documented AdFection, a campaign in which the Israeli-founded ad firm Discover-Tech delivered zero-click mercenary spyware attributed to Candiru through the online advertising ecosystem. During 2024 and 2025, 45 devices belonging to Al Jazeera were targeted. Citizen Lab calls this the first detailed public technical evidence o…
Unit 42 analyzed an Atomic macOS (AMOS) stealer infection generated in a lab on Aug. 5, 2026, starting from a fake "macOS toolkit" instruction page hosted at getmacouscloud.com. The page tells victims to paste a command into Terminal, a ClickFix-style copy/paste technique, which downloads a Zsh script and then installs a Mach-O AMOS paylo…
The Citizen Lab disclosed AdFection, the first technical demonstration of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered through targeted online advertising. The Israeli firm Discover-Tech presents itself as a legitimate ad company but acts as a facilitator for several mercenary spyware partners, including Candiru. Its ads covertly direct million…
A Dark Reading report describes AdFection, a technique in which spyware vendors exploit targeted ad bidding in the digital advertising ecosystem to identify and track individuals and organizations of interest. Ad impressions are reportedly turned into a zero-click delivery path for spyware, so targets need no interaction. The excerpt give…
Citizen Lab reported the first publicly confirmed zero-click mercenary spyware attack delivered through targeted online ads, a technique it calls "AdFection". The Israel-based adtech firm Discover-Tech allegedly acts as a front and middleman between the advertising ecosystem and spyware vendors. Citizen Lab traced attacks on at least 45 A…
Citizen Lab reports that Candiru spyware was delivered to devices at Al Jazeera Media Network through targeted online advertisements, in a zero-click attack that only required the malicious ad to render on the victim's device. Citizen Lab calls the technique AdFection and says its report is the first public technical confirmation of merce…
Citizen Lab reported that Israeli mercenary spyware vendor Candiru infected devices at Al Jazeera through targeted online ads that needed no user interaction. It calls this the first public technical confirmation of mercenary spyware reaching real devices via ad delivery. At least 45 Al Jazeera devices were targeted in 2024 and 2025, and …
Infoblox attributes the long-running Help TDS traffic distribution system, active since at least April 2017, to Hotejka, a small Russian-language affiliate program that appears to be a rebrand of ROI777 (exposed in 2018). The TDS fingerprints visitors and redirects them to browser-lock tech support scams that push victims to call centers,…
Infoblox links the long-running Help TDS traffic distribution system, active since at least 2017, to the Russian-language affiliate program Hotejka, assessed with high confidence to be a rebrand of the traffic monetization operation ROI777. Help TDS supplies PHP templates and a malicious WordPress plugin that affiliates install on comprom…
Researchers at SafeDep analyzed a macOS implant recovered from a compromised workstation. Infection began on 2026-07-26 with a paid YouTube video ad impersonating TradingView that led to a fake .pkg installer. The malware is a remote-controlled task runner, not a single-purpose stealer. It persists via a LaunchAgent that re-fetches a shel…