‘Nightmare Scenario’: Zero-Click Spyware Is Infecting Phones via Targeted Ads
www.wired.com
Researchers at The Citizen Lab have for the first time released technical evidence of sophisticated mercenary spyware being distributed via online advertising.
  • vision@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    47·
    20 hours ago

    The last time I opened the Wired site was like 10 years ago, it’s still telling me “You’ve read your last free article.” See you in 2036 ig

    • anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      Tells me that too. Then I copy the url into my readeck instance and it pulls the article for me and gives me a better reading experience.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      23·
      18 hours ago

      “You’ve read your last free article.”

      Do they know how ominous that sounds? It reads like they got mad at my freeloading and sent out a hitman.

      • jsnfwlr@lemmy.mlEnglish
        10·
        16 hours ago

        Or they know the date and time of your very natural death…

        You’ve read your last free article. We suggest going to the doctor for a full workup. Screen for everything. Get a will drawn up. Hug your kids.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          8 hours ago

          Literally none of that should be surprising for people who have a basic understanding of how the WWW works.

          Which, I’m starting to realize, is a depressively low fraction of the general population. I was taught this in middle school, for fuck’s sake.

    • Reannlegge@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      20 hours ago

      Wow they gave you a time to come back, they have just said I have surpassed my 5 free articles for years now, I think it is because I am using a “DNS sink hole”/adblocker I do not care enough to turn my pihole off just to try and read it.

      I have gotten a static IP, and clear my cache regularly since my last attempt to read a wired article so it is not that they are using anything to see that I have tried them before.

  • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    10·
    17 hours ago

    What is a DNS sinkhole and how is it related to the content of the article? Didn’t seem to mention DNS

    • chagall@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      23·
      16 hours ago

      What is a DNS sinkhole

      A DNS sinkhole is a little program that sits in between your computer and the DNS server that provides your internet lookups. It looks at all of your DNS requests in an unencrypted format. If a DNS lookup from your browser, mobile app or any other internet connected machine matches an entry it has in its “blocklist” then it returns a value of 0.0.0.0 (or some other customizable value including NXDOMAIN). But if the DNS entry is not on the blocklist, then that request will be forwarded to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8), Quad9 (9.9.9.9) or other DNS provider and get an accurate value for the DNS lookup.

      Most of the time, the blocklists consist of adware domains such as Google Ad Services, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, etc. This has the effect of removing ads from devices that normally are unable to block ads such as ads inside mobile apps, ads in Roku, etc.

      how is it related to the content of the article?

      The article indicated that the malicious spyware was transmitted through viewable ads on the target’s mobile device. This is combated most effectively by using a DNS sinkhole.

      I should note that the article does not mention if current blocklists would have thwarted this attack. However, it does say that the ads were transmitted, in some instances, via Google Ad services, which these blocklists do effectively target.

      • cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        13·
        16 hours ago

        Unfortunately a lot of the magnificent 7 of advertisers have caught on to this and will serve ads dynamically in many of their platforms.

        • chagall@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          17·
          16 hours ago

          I’ve heard that before but I haven’t seen an ad in years. But I’m probably not the norm. Between userscripts, ad-removing frontends like invidious and choosing services like Lemmy over the competition, you can pretty safely remove ads from most platforms. Of course, Jellyfin helps 😂

        • AgentSeven@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          14 hours ago

          Yeah, they’ve done this on this one particular site that I like to read, one old (hilarious) celebrity blogger who made a new home on [redacted]. [redacted] is pure shit. I dunno exactly what they’re doing but the ads they serve up are largely local rather than third party - and they’re served up so aggressively the site is all but unreadable on my phone. So ads are crazy in-your-face despite having adblock on the phone itself and a Pi-Hole! Just to keep reading the guy I like I had to set up a shortcut that loads it in reader view to bypass all the bullshit and fuck knows how long that will last before they somehow figure out how to block reader view.

          Edit: I probably shouldn’t be giving them ideas, lol.

          • chagall@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            6·
            13 hours ago

            I saw the domain before you edited it lol. I went to the site and have zero ads on mobile, although I did have an empty placeholder in one spot where the ads would have been.

            Make sure the following domains are blocked on your pihole:

            html-load.cc
githack.com
cdn.statically.io
revcontent.com
pub.network

            Then, make sure you have these two lines as entries on your mobile adblocker:

            /ad-shield/e/*$script,third-party
/cdn-cgi/zaraz/*

            If there is a specific url you’d like me to look at, feel free to message me.

            Edit to add: even better than the individual domains, to add https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/hagezi/dns-blocklists@latest/adblock/pro.txt as a list and then just include the githack.com domain. Pihole supports adblock syntax, so you’ll be fine with this.

            • AgentSeven@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2·
              3 hours ago

              I did this, and you’re right - no ads. 👍 Thanks a bunch, I’ve saved your comment so if I run into one of these again I may hit you up!

              • chagall@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                1·
                28 minutes ago

                Thanks for taking the time to let me know it worked for you! I like helping people so this made my day!

    • Reannlegge@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      19 hours ago

      Yes, from what I understand. They are using ad services from the big ad companies, and because capitalism sucks they are completely fine with selling the spots.

      if you do not have a system to VPN into your home I would suggest get a firewall (preferably one you can install openWRT of opnSense on) and VPN into your LAN when away from home.

      • jsnfwlr@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        16 hours ago

        My TPlink omada router has Wireguard built in, so I use WG tunnels on my mobile devices to tunnel home where my PiHole (soon to be replaced by Technitium) blocks ads and malicious content.

        • Reannlegge@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          13 hours ago

          My flint2, came with OpenWRT, but I installed a vanilla OpenWRT onto it it handles my many different wifi APs, all my vLANs, and a couple VPNs. I have a finally tuned pihole setup, I could not imagine changing it, I was watching this video by SomOrdinaryGamer so I went to the site he made an example of and I got no ads with just my pihole.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    51·
    5 minutes ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    AP WiFi Access Point
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
    VPN Virtual Private Network

    4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.

    [Thread #134 for this comm, first seen 17th Oct 2026, 01:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        12 hours ago

        The main way is it has a built in recursive DNS server so you don’t have to duct tape Pi Hole and Ubound together

        • Ooops@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          I never understood pihole in the first place. It’s just a fancy web interface you do never look at if the thing does its job quietly in the background. And unbound alone is perfectly able to use blocklists with one line of configuration (and an onliner script to convert the common lists into the right format).

          • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 hours ago

            Because you have to mess with it all the time. It’s easier to get in and get out to make changes with the nice interface. It’d be different if it was set it and forget it but realistically it’s not.

            • Ooops@feddit.orgEnglish
              1·
              10 minutes ago

              It literally is a cron job or systemd timer to load an updated blocklist from time to time and I haven’t looked at it for years (well… other an changing a path when I switched from unbound to dnsproxy, because that one is even simpler, doesn’t even need a config other than a few parameters at startup and can provide DoH, DoT and/or DoQ access for when I’m not at home)

      • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.zipEnglish
        6·
        19 hours ago

        It’s a more complete dns server. You can more easily do dns over https, set up zones, and custom dns entries are a lot easier imo.

        In summary it’s more focused on being dns, the ad blocking is a feature on top. You also don’t have to manually configure unbound for recursive dns like you do pi hole. Etc etc

          • Ooops@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            5 hours ago

            If you just want simple ad blocking you don’t actually need pi hole for it’s web interface you don’t ever look at once it runs. Unbound alone can do the job with minimal configuration.

            Nowadays I even changed my setup to dnsproxy, which doesn’t even need any config. It’s just a handful parameters when you start it. And it does all the filtering for my home network as well as providing DoH access for when I’m not at home and connected from somewhere else.

          • stratself@lemdro.idEnglish
            10·
            17 hours ago

            I’d prefer Adguard Home. Does the same thing but also supports encrypted DoT/DoQ/DoH upstreams. And the UI looks a bit neater for me

          • kmartburrito@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            16 hours ago

            Yeah but what you will eventually find, if reliability matters at all to you, is that the pihole isn’t the best for this. For one, many run on an SD card, which isn’t really stable long-term (I started here and had to fix it due to SD card corruption quite a few times). Second, you don’t have a backup. DNS not running when your machines depend on it equals an immediate outage across ALL devices (as long as you have it configured at your router level, which you should be doing, right?).

            Technitium (and others) solve this problem gracefully.

            I started with pihole (ad blocking) and unbound (recursive DNS), and that was a pain to set up properly.

            Moved do technitium (which offers all of these in one package) plus the ability to natively cluster a second instance (so you have a backup load balanced instance for this critical service)

            The best part is that setting it up if you have an old laptop or desktop running docker is incredibly simple. I had two nodes up and running clustered in less than 15 minutes. Took less time than setting up one pihole.

            If you don’t have docker it may take more time, but that’s the slippery slope of setting up a homelab and running services like this.

            • lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.worldEnglish
              61·
              6 hours ago

              My Pi hole has been up and solid for about a decade now, so not sure “isn’t really stable long term” is landing

              Thank you for the in-depth explanation, Technitium sounds really involved. I just plunked down a pi hole, turned it on, and it’s been working for years and years. I’ll keep this in mind though if I ever want to drive myself nuts with networking

              • kmartburrito@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                4 hours ago

                Good for you, many don’t have the same experience. Technitium is easier to set up in my experience, but you do you if it works for you. That’s the benefit of having free choices.

                Just to be clear, I’m not trying to sell you or anyone on technitium over pihole or pihole+unbound, they’re all free and I don’t work for them or anything. However, as someone that has gone through this journey with all of them, I’ll never go back to pihole, especially with the features technitium has and the importance of DNS to my home lab plus the incredible ease of setup.

            • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
              41·
              6 hours ago

              No backup with PiHole?

              PiHole can run redundant if you want. Does Technitium do this differently? Or more easily?

              • kmartburrito@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                4 hours ago

                Technitium does this incredibly easily. I fiddled with pihole and unbound for so long to get them to coexist properly, and pihole alone before that. The pihole part was easy although unreliable on a raspberry pi due to the sd card. It was better once I added an ssd to the pi, but it didn’t have recursive DNS. Adding unbound and getting them configured properly and coexisting properly wasn’t an easy task. Technitium has all of this in one package and was trivial to set up one or more clustered nodes. You don’t need anything to ensure they both work together, the clustering feature does this incredibly easily. One goes down? No prob, I see a discord alert from uptime kuma letting me know. When it comes back up cluster mgmt syncs everything and they load balance again.

                My current setup has an uptime of 210 days, and likely would be longer if it weren’t for a power outage.

                It really is so simple, I’d suggest everyone try it out. You can always change it back if you don’t like it. And, like the pihole, you can load curated block lists.