• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

Law enforcement operations seized BlackSuit ransomware gang’s darknet sites

 | 

Arizona woman sentenced for aiding North Korea in U.S. IT job fraud scheme

 | 

Operation CargoTalon targets Russia’s aerospace with EAGLET malware,

 | 

Unpatched flaw in EoL LG LNV5110R cameras lets hackers gain Admin access

 | 

Koske, a new AI-Generated Linux malware appears in the threat landscape

 | 

Mitel patches critical MiVoice MX-ONE Auth bypass flaw

 | 

Coyote malware is first-ever malware abusing Windows UI Automation

 | 

SonicWall fixed critical flaw in SMA 100 devices exploited in Overstep malware attacks

 | 

DSPM & AI Are Booming: $17.87B and $4.8T Markets by 2033

 | 

Stealth backdoor found in WordPress mu-Plugins folder

 | 

U.S. CISA adds CrushFTP, Google Chromium, and SysAid flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

U.S. CISA urges FCEB agencies to fix two Microsoft SharePoint flaws immediately and added them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Sophos fixed two critical Sophos Firewall vulnerabilities

 | 

French Authorities confirm XSS.is admin arrested in Ukraine

 | 

Microsoft linked attacks on SharePoint flaws to China-nexus actors

 | 

Cisco confirms active exploitation of ISE and ISE-PIC flaws

 | 

SharePoint under fire: new ToolShell attacks target enterprises

 | 

CrushFTP zero-day actively exploited at least since July 18

 | 

Hardcoded credentials found in HPE Aruba Instant On Wi-Fi devices

 | 

MuddyWater deploys new DCHSpy variants amid Iran-Israel conflict

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Cyber Crime
  • Hacking
  • Mobile Ad Network exploited to run a major DDoS Attack

Mobile Ad Network exploited to run a major DDoS Attack

Pierluigi Paganini September 29, 2015

Security experts at CloudFlare observed a major DDoS attack against one of their customers that appeared to leverage a mobile ad network.

CloudFlare firms revealed that one of its customers was recently hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that appeared to leverage a mobile ad network and malicious JavaScript.

The experts explained that the DDoS attack relied on a JavaScrip that generates legitimate HTTP requests.

The possible exploitation of ad network was discussed two years ago at the Black Hat conference by the experts Jeremiah Grossman and Matt Johansen.

Unfortunately, this kind of DDoS attack is being popular in the hacking community, in April security researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Toronto have uncovered a powerful weapon of the Chinese Government cyber arsenal, dubbed the Great Cannon, used to hit websites with powerful DDoS attacks. The Great Cannon has been used by Chinese authorities to knock-out two anti-censorship GitHub pages and it can be also used as a hacking tool to silently install malware on the targeted machine.

The experts explained that the Great Cannon relies on malicious JavaScript injected into unencrypted traffic in order to carry on DDoS attacks.

Another similar DDoS attack was uncovered last week, experts at Imgur discovered that a vulnerability in the platform was exploited by attackers to target the imageboards 4chan and 8chan.

Now, CloudFlare noticed a large number of HTTP requests addressing one of its customer’s website, the DDoS attack peaked at over 1 billion requests per hour. The experts observed a total of 4.5 billion requests reaching the content delivery network’s servers on the day of the attack.

DDoS attack log

The overall number of unique IP addresses originating the requests is 650,000, 99.8 percent these addresses belong to China.

Experts at CloudFlare discovered that nearly 80 percent of the requests were originated from mobile devices (mobile apps and browsers commonly used by Chinese users).

“Attacks like this form a new trend,” states a blog post published by CloudFlare. “They present a great danger in the internet — defending against this type of flood is not easy for small website operators.”

“There is no way to know for sure why so many mobile devices visited the attack page, but the most plausible distribution vector seems to be an ad network,” Majkowski wrote. “It seems probable that users were served advertisements containing the malicious JavaScript. [These] ads were likely showed in iframes in mobile apps, or mobile browsers to people casually browsing the internet.” explained the researcher Marek Majkowski.

The experts discovered that the websites from the “Referer” header pointed to an ad aggregator or a link farm. The DDoS attack relies on a JavaScript hosted on these pages and that was able to generate a large number of XMLHttpRequest (XHR) requests.

CloudFlare researchers excluded that the DDoS attack was conducted by injecting TCP packets like observing in the DDoS attack conducted by the Great Cannon.

CloudFlare provided the following description for the attack scenario:

  • A user was casually browsing the Internet or opened an app on the smartphone.
  • The user was served an iframe with an advertisement.
  • The advertisement content was requested from an ad network.
  • The ad network forwarded the request to the third-party that won the ad auction.
  • Either the third-party website was the “attack page”, or it forwarded the user to an “attack page”.
  • The user was served an attack page containing a malicious JavaScript which launched a flood of XHR requests against CloudFlare servers.

“It seems the biggest difficulty is not in creating the JavaScript — it is in effectively distributing it. Since an efficient distribution vector is crucial in issuing large floods, up until now I haven’t seen many sizable browser-based floods,” Majkowski added.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – DDoS,  Java Script)


facebook linkedin twitter

ad network CloudFlare Cybercrime DDoS Great Cannon Hacking Java Script

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 26, 2025
Law enforcement operations seized BlackSuit ransomware gang’s darknet sites
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 26, 2025
Arizona woman sentenced for aiding North Korea in U.S. IT job fraud scheme
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    Law enforcement operations seized BlackSuit ransomware gang’s darknet sites

    Cyber Crime / July 26, 2025

    Arizona woman sentenced for aiding North Korea in U.S. IT job fraud scheme

    Intelligence / July 26, 2025

    Operation CargoTalon targets Russia’s aerospace with EAGLET malware,

    Intelligence / July 25, 2025

    Unpatched flaw in EoL LG LNV5110R cameras lets hackers gain Admin access

    Security / July 25, 2025

    Koske, a new AI-Generated Linux malware appears in the threat landscape

    Malware / July 25, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT