A newly discovered ad fraud campaign called Kaleidoscope is bombarding Android users with unskippable ads. The campaign targets users via legitimate-looking apps on the Google Play Store in addition to malicious fakes available for download from third-party websites.
The ads are triggered even without user interaction on both versions of the app, which share the same app ID. The campaign was discovered by researchers at IAS Threat Lab, who found more than 130 apps using Kaleidoscope, amassing nearly 2.5 million downloads per month.
Ad scams are generally targeted at companies, skimming them of money by promising ads that aren’t shown anywhere. Scammers use bots or fraudulent installs to generate fake views, clicks, and interactions on ads allegedly being shown to real viewers.
They’re relatively harmless to victims, though. Other than slowing down your phone, a fake ad scam app won’t do much else. This also helps the malware avoid detection and pumps up its advertising stats.
IAS’ report claims that Kaleidoscope appears to be built over another existing ad fraud network dubbed CaramelAds. Both campaigns use duplicate apps on both legitimate and third-party sources and share similarities in their source code.
Because both apps share the same app ID, advertisers continue believing their ads are getting more views. Additionally, while they believe they’re paying for ads on a legitimate app, the ads run on hundreds of other apps, which runs the risk of damaging the advertising company’s reputation.
Thankfully, the Google Play Store does a good job of removing malware-laden apps, so you’re relatively safe as long as your app downloads are coming from Google’s official store. Aside from that, prevent downloading apps from third-party stores, be careful of notification permissions asked from any downloaded apps, and keep your phone’s OS updated.
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