Millions of users worldwide have been served ads by Discover-Tech since 2024, say researchers. Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy View image in fullscreen Millions of users worldwide have been served ads by Discover-Tech since 2024, say researchers. Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy Hacking Online ads weaponised to deliver ‘zero-click’ spyware, researchers say Discover-Tech’s Controlium software lets clients mass-profile internet users then covertly hack targets, say researchers at University of Toronto
Prefer the Guardian on Google An Israeli advertising agency has been serving millions of online adverts that allow “zero-click” spyware to be used against targets, researchers at a Canadian university have said .
Citizen Lab, a digital investigations research unit at the University of Toronto, said it believed dozens of devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera had been compromised by spyware delivered through ads run by Discover-Tech, which describes itself as a specialised digital advertising agency.
According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech operates a software platform called Controlium that allows its clients to “mass-profile and deanonymise” internet users then covertly hack targets with third-party spyware. Unlike infections that rely on people interacting with links or files, the spyware requires no interaction from the victim to be installed, making it a new delivery technique, Citizen Lab says.
The infections happen without a user’s knowledge, and in a matter of seconds, according to Citizen Lab.
“[The online advertising] ecosystem is being weaponised at a massive scale to profile millions of users, then silently infect targets with zero-click mercenary spyware,” the report says.
According to the report, Controlium is able to harvest a user’s identity and IP address when the user is shown a seemingly benign custom-created ad – for example, for a digital game or a telecoms service. If the user has been selected as a target for hacking, a mercenary spyware firm can then send a malicious code containing spyware to their device, the researchers say.
They say that millions of users worldwide have been served ads by Discover-Tech since 2024, including in Yemen, Brazil, Mexico and Czechia.
Related work by the research group Confiant also suggests that Discover-Tech’s ads have been shown to users of the networks of government entities in Europe and the US, as well as the UN, Nato, the international criminal court and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“It’s disastrous that major ad vendors and organisations apparently were neither able to detect nor prevent the company’s malicious advertising operations for years,” said Wolfie Christl, a researcher at Citizen Lab. “The way the online advertising ecosystem works today is a security threat for states, the private sector, civil society and everyone else alike.”
According to Citizen Lab, Controlium acts as a “facilitator” for third-party spyware firms that have targeted “government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics and embassy workers”. Citizen Lab claims it can deliver spyware that can access everything on the device of a target, extracting messages, photos and emails, recording calls and secretly activating microphones.
The full extent of the targeting allegedly enabled by Discover-Tech is unknown. Citizen Lab’s findings join mounting evidence that the opaque arrangements underpinning the world of online advertising can be leveraged for surveillance.…