THEIAS Threat Labpublished a new report revealing an extensive and sophisticated ad fraud scheme called "Vapor Threat," which uses fake Android apps to implement endless full-screen intrusive video ads.
This fraudulent operation, called Vapor, gets its name from its ability to "vaporize" any real functionality of the apps, leaving behind only intrusive ads.
Not at all,The Threat Lab has identified over 180 application IDs as part of the Vapor Threat scheme,whathave accumulated over 56 million downloadsandgenerated over 200 million advertising bids daily since 2024,without any real functionality being delivered to users.
The IAS Threat Lab shared the findings with Google, which subsequently removed all the applications identified in the report from Google Play. However, the fraudsters behind the operation created several developer accounts, each hosting only a set of applications to distribute their operation and avoid detection. This distributed setup ensures that the deletion of a single account has minimal impact on the overall operation.
For more information on how apps were designed to mimic legitimate apps, the impact of the fraud on consumers and brands, the scale and timeline of the operation, and more, the full report can be downloaded atfrom this link.
For context, the IAS Threat Lab is a dedicated team of experts focused on identifying and taking down sophisticated fraud operations using malware analysis and reverse engineering to discover emerging threats before they emerge.
