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URLs are central to a myriad of cyber-security threats, from phishing to the distribution of malware. Their inherent ease of use and familiarity is continuously abused by attackers to evade defences and deceive end-users. Seemingly…
Anti-malware agents typically communicate with their remote services to share information about suspicious files. These remote services use their up-to-date information and global context (view) to help classify the files and instruct their…
A reader browsing through an online article is highly likely to encounter an advertorial, often without realizing it. Advertorials represent a relatively new marketing strategy where advertisements are deliberately designed to resemble the…
VirusTotal (VT) provides aggregated threat intelligence on various entities including URLs, IP addresses, and binaries. It is widely used by researchers and practitioners to collect ground truth and evaluate the maliciousness of entities.…
Malicious URL, a.k.a. malicious website, is a common and serious threat to cybersecurity. Malicious URLs host unsolicited content (spam, phishing, drive-by exploits, etc.) and lure unsuspecting users to become victims of scams (monetary…
One of the major and serious threats that the Internet faces today is the vast amounts of data and files which need to be evaluated for potential malicious intent. Malicious software, often referred to as a malware that are designed by…
Malicious advertisement URLs pose a security risk since they are the source of cyber-attacks, and the need to address this issue is growing in both industry and academia. Generally, the attacker delivers an attack vector to the user by…
In Android apps, their developers frequently place app promotion ads, namely advertisements to promote other apps. Unfortunately, the inadequate vetting of ad content allows malicious developers to exploit app promotion ads as a new…
Many internet ventures rely on advertising for their revenue. However, users feel discontent by the presence of ads on the websites they visit, as the data-size of ads is often comparable to that of the actual content. This has an impact…
In today's world, the presence of online disinformation and propaganda is more widespread than ever. Independent publishers are funded mostly via digital advertising, which is unfortunately also the case for those publishing disinformation…
Monetizing websites and web apps through online advertising is widespread in the web ecosystem. The online advertising ecosystem nowadays forces publishers to integrate ads from these third-party domains. On the one hand, this raises…
The rapid growth of online advertising has fueled the growth of ad-blocking software, such as new ad-blocking and privacy-oriented browsers or browser extensions. In response, both ad publishers and ad networks are constantly trying to…
Malicious software is abundant in a world of innumerable computer users, who are constantly faced with these threats from various sources like the internet, local networks and portable drives. Malware is potentially low to high risk and can…
With the rapid technological advancement, security has become a major issue due to the increase in malware activity that poses a serious threat to the security and safety of both computer systems and stakeholders. To maintain stakeholders,…
While substantial effort has been devoted to understand fraudulent activity in traditional online advertising (search and banner), more recent forms such as video ads have received little attention. The understanding and identification of…
Web-fraud is one of the most unpleasant features of today's Internet. Two well-known examples of fraudulent activities on the web are phishing and typosquatting. Their effects range from relatively benign (such as unwanted ads) to downright…
In contemporary times, people rely heavily on the internet and search engines to obtain information, either directly or indirectly. However, the information accessible to users constitutes merely 4% of the overall information present on the…
The daily deluge of alerts is a sombre reality for Security Operations Centre (SOC) personnel worldwide. They are at the forefront of an organisation's cybersecurity infrastructure, and face the unenviable task of prioritising threats…
The web is experiencing an explosive growth in the last years. New technologies are introduced at a very fast-pace with the aim of narrowing the gap between web-based applications and traditional desktop applications. The results are web…
The rise of ad-blockers is viewed as an economic threat by online publishers, especially those who primarily rely on ad- vertising to support their services. To address this threat, publishers have started retaliating by employing ad-block…