Hosting and streaming costs money that needs to be recouped so the service can stay online. On the internet if something is “free”, it usually means you are the product in some shape or form. Once you hit the play button, you can start streaming right away, without any interruptions in the middle.” Interestingly, the site claims to offer free HD movies and TV series with “absolutely zero ads on our site. DeepSee’s crawlers had observed the site mikerincom loading ads deep under the content of moviesjoy, but it wasn’t exactly clear how this was happening. A deceptive business modelĭeepSee researchers contacted Malwarebytes about a scheme they had observed recently via a video streaming website called moviesjoyto. Not only are these streaming sites breaking the law by using copyrighted material, they are also defrauding advertisers to the tune of $1.2million per month, based on conservative estimates. DeepStreamer used different techniques to evade detection and forge traffic by surreptitiously loading “money sites” (ad-monetized sites used to monetize/launder the human traffic to pirate sites) filled with Google ads completely hidden from view, while internet users were watching movies. Researchers at DeepSee and Malwarebytes have identified an invalid traffic scheme that has gone undetected for over one year via a number of illegal video streaming platforms. Unfortunately, at any given point in time, there are thousands of sites that allow users to illegally stream pirated content, and they often manage to devise strategies that allow them to monetize their illegally sourced content with programmatic advertising. Legitimate ones will typically require a subscription fee or rely on advertising as part of their business model. Online video streaming sites have always been some of the most visited destinations on the web. Working with a leading ad buying platform, we were able to confirm there were hundreds of millions of bid requests generated for these domains between January and February 2023 Using extremely conservative estimates, which factor in a 50% ad-block rate & 70% ad-unit fill rate, we project advertiser spend on this scheme between $120k – $1.2 million in January 2023 alone There was not a single seller in common between each of the sites used for laundering (the “money sites”), but most offered their inventory for sale through Google Ad Manager Streaming sites in the DeepStreamer fraud ring generated an estimated 210,550,928 visits in January 2023, as measured by Similar Web Over a dozen unique domains were found selling ad inventory through Google Ad Manager, even though the pages were embedded invisibly under the content of illegal movie & porn streaming sites This investigation was a joint effort between Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence’s Jérôme Segura, DeepSee’s Rocky Moss and Antonio Torres.
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