‘MS Drainer’ scammers used Google Ads to swipe $59M in crypto: Report

[_act_]

Do no click on ads, especially Google ads. But people will not listen.

A 'Wallet Drainer' has been linked to phishing campaigns on Google search and X ads, draining approximately $58M from over 63K victims in 9 months.

Money stolen from over 63000 people through Google ads through MS Drainer. People do not care about ads. They do not know how dangerous ads are.

The attackers used a variety of techniques to get around Google AdSense audits, including regional targeting and page-switching.

Scammers used a wallet draining service called “MS Drainer” to siphon approximately $59 million in crypto from victims over the past nine months, according to a Dec. 21 report on X (formerly Twitter) from blockchain security platform Scam Sniffer. The scammers used Google Ads to target victims with fake versions of popular crypto sites, including Zapper, Lido, Stargate, DefiLlama, Orbiter Finance and Radient, the report states.

Wallet drainers are blockchain protocols that allow scammers to transfer crypto from a victim to the attacker without their consent, usually by exploiting the token approval process. Developers usually charge a percentage of the profit in exchange for using their drainer software, and this fee is enforced through smart contracts, making it impossible to avoid.

If you want to allow scammers and hackers to locate you to scam you or drain your wallet, continue to click on ads.

Google do not care about anybody than to make money from ads.

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[Nwada001]

Do you know that people don't just go around clicking on ad links? They come across some mistakenly switching over to a tab where an ad automatically opens for them while browsing a particular web page. This happens especially for anyone who browses and reads through an unbookmarked web page without an ad blocker.
 
The mistake of some is trusting Google to do everything for them, like auto-correcting website spellings and searching for web urls instead of just typing them, where Google can redirect you to a cloned and phishing site without even realising it, and out of carelessness, the user can give away their logins to the fake one, which is enough for the scanners to drain whatever holdings the person has on that.
 
Normalizing bookmarking regular websites will help many people a lot escape all of these phishing and clone site scams.

[mk4]

Tip for the readers: Install the uBlock Origin browser plugin.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Do you know that people don't just go around clicking on ad links? They come across some mistakenly switching over to a tab where an ad automatically opens for them while browsing a particular web page.

I personally know a lot of people who barely even know how to use a computer, and I'll say that A LOT of them do click on Google ads; as people usually click on the first/second result on Google(which mostly is an ad).

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Do you know that people don't just go around clicking on ad links? They come across some mistakenly switching over to a tab where an ad automatically opens for them while browsing a particular web page. This happens especially for anyone who browses and reads through an unbookmarked web page without an ad blocker.
<...>
Normalizing bookmarking regular websites will help many people a lot escape all of these phishing and clone site scams.

I'm glad to read this because I do both: I bookmark the pages I regularly visit and I also use ad blockers. I used to do it for convenience but seeing that it helps security, now I will do it with more reason.

Although there is a second derivative of this, and that is that these people held the cryptocurrencies on online platforms, instead of storing them in a HW, and we also know that this is a blunder. A few would have just enough in them to make trades but we know that too many people leave their funds on the sites as if they were leaving them in a bank but when these things happen there is a lot of whining.

A $60 HW can save you a lot of whining.

[pinggoki]

That's why I only do my browsing on Twitter and Google with Brave, it's got a built-in adblocker so you don't need to worry about those pesky ads that are on the websites that you visit or sometimes pop-up and take you to a different website. I would probably credit Brave for being able to help me not worry if I clicked on something dangerous on the ads because there's no ads there. I just hope that they don't have that problem with YouTube anymore where there's no sounds playing in the videos but if I use another browser, there's no problem with the sound.

[Amphenomenon]

I guess google really have to improve on their security, malicious link before accepting them as ads, this should really not be an hassle for them after all this is their main source of income, they should think of customers security because lots of Ignorant and naive people thinks their data and activities is in safe hands with google.

I personally know a lot of people who barely even know how to use a computer, and I'll say that A LOT of them do click on Google ads; as people usually click on the first/second result on Google(which mostly is an ad).

90% of individuals don`t know the difference between this ads and an actual link and most times they just fail to check properly before clicking especially from search results.

The mistake of some is trusting Google to do everything for them, like auto-correcting website spellings and searching for web urls instead of just typing them, where Google can redirect you to a cloned and phishing site without even realising it, and out of carelessness, the user can give away their logins to the fake one, which is enough for the scanners to drain whatever holdings the person has on that.

The issue is we are mostly lazy to do things our self especially online and when we or someone close to us then we start caring about privacy, using good browser which offer some of this features will really be helpful since ad blocker is something everyone ought to be having in this present time but some still fail to do so but there are some good privacy inclined browser that are user friendly like Firefox and others
Aside going with the plan of changing browser, another easy thing is to switch to Duckduck Go as your main search engine than using the common google search engine which most offer as default search engine

[Crypt0Gore]

Try using ads blocker on your PC, also stop using google search, they have many malicious links apart from ads, I believe that Microsoft Bing search engine is far more safer than others, there is no single link to any ads in the Bing search results.

This was why I don't like using my PC for storing crypto and also using the same PC for surfing the internet, many garbage will arise from the dept just for browsing the internet on your PC.

I recommend using uBlock or other ads blocker just in case and also get a hardware wallet instead of running a software wallet on your computer.

[Faisal2202]

Do no click on ads, especially Google ads. But people will not listen.

A 'Wallet Drainer' has been linked to phishing campaigns on Google search and X ads, draining approximately $58M from over 63K victims in 9 months.

It is sad that a large amount of people lost hell lot of money but at the same time this is very outstanding like it is not an easy task to bypass the Google AdSense audits and system checks and run ads with malware on it. Ir remembers me of days when I got to use a computer for the first time and when I started to use the internet on it my elders said, never click on any ads they are harmful as they contain malware or in there linu Viruses in it.

I never clicked on any until I understood what is really happening and how these hackers were getting into people's devices just for data, and to loot money. Besides Google there are hundreds of other ads affiliate agencies like Adsterra, etc. etc. and I think many hackers are still using other agencies for spreading these malware ads because bypassing google is not an easy task.

[sokani]

Do no click on ads, especially Google ads. But people will not listen.

Well, ignorance is a disease. According to a popular saying "If you're not well informed, you'll be deformed." The truth is, not that they won't listen, most persons don't know the dangers of clicking Google ads, because no one would intentionally want to lose his hard earned money to scammers, they're just ignorant of some of the tricks of scammers. However, running a good ad blocker will help to block ads from popping during browsing sessions and safe you from such an attack.

[BIT-BENDER]

It is sad that a large amount of people lost hell lot of money but at the same time this is very outstanding like it is not an easy task to bypass the Google AdSense audits and system checks and run ads with malware on it.
[/quote]
I would have to disagree with you right now mate, I think it's now easy for scammers to bypass the very gullible Google Ad audit or what ever regulates such things.
Google themselves should not be fully trusted with the fact that Google are spying on their users privacy and Turing it in a form of money making scheme for them through bombarding their users with ads relating to their interest.
Now this is why you need to have your wallet offline, you actually can not be too careful on the internet anymore, anyone can fall a victim to this but having an cold storage wallet comes in handy.
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

[Davidvictorson]

Scammers are exploiting all them measures and way to steal funds. Google and other big Internet corporation which should do more to tackle this issue seems to be unable to domit or rather, do not want to do anything about it. I know not all ads are bad but how if Google can't block these ads outrightly, they should be able to put a little text below each ads displayed that it leads to potential scams. This is what institutional responsibility is all about. Individual responsibility is about not clicking on ads, downloading ad blockers, reporting these scam ads.

[Faisal2202]

I would have to disagree with you right now mate, I think it's now easy for scammers to bypass the very gullible Google Ad audit or what ever regulates such things.
Google themselves should not be fully trusted with the fact that Google are spying on their users privacy and Turing it in a form of money making scheme for them through bombarding their users with ads relating to their interest.
Now this is why you need to have your wallet offline, you actually can not be too careful on the internet anymore, anyone can fall a victim to this but having an cold storage wallet comes in handy.
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

You are right but to some extent, because I was referring to the ads that we get to see on different websites or applications, those ads are put by the owner of those websites and applications, and the procedure is simple, you apply for AdSense, and if your site gets the approval you have the opportunity to get the code of the ads or can ask google to place ads automatically on your site.

You as a user can verify that code, but you as a scam user will definitely insert some malware codes in it, so when the consumers will press the ads, that corrupted code will be run on your device and you will be rigged. But, Google and all other agencies have there filtering and scanning mechanisms there to keep track of each code or ad they have placed and they check them in some sequence if that ad code is being changed with rigged code or not.

I don't aware of that time sequence, but I did place AdSense on my website, that's why I can say, it is not that easy to save your account from doing such a thing. But I can agree to the fact that, as a scammer, I can make 1000 websites in a year, and if get approval on all of them, which is not impossible for me because I have the basic skills and getting an approval is not that hard also. I can place rigged ads on all of them and with some proper techniques, I can get some traffic and can make them to click on it. There are under display ads, that you click on the website and an ad opens up in new tab I don't think we can save ourself from such ads maybe using an ad bocker.

[Sandra_hakeem]

Do not click on ads, especially Google ads. But people will not listen.

I see this eventualities as common mistakes people make...on the other hand, you could also be trying to evade this ads and they'll forcefully pop-up on your screen, sometimes leaving you with no other option than to close that particular tab ... What if you were halfway through an authentication process on the said tab?? What happens in that case?.. quite fraustrating!!
so for every browser, I try as much as possible to induce the ad blocking; it has it disadvantages though but since nothing's popping up my screen to disrupt me, I'm fine...

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

[CryptSafe]

The add-ons that pop up are very frustrating. I hate it when I am scrolling and I see adds popping here and there on my gadgets. It's time-consuming, and as such, I do not give consent to it on my device, block them immediately, and do not bother looking at it a second time. Its just that people do not really know that adds are mostly tools used by scammers and here we are hearing this. I think the best way to handle or avoid this is to block adds from popping up on your personal gadgets.

[Odusko]

Google have indeed neglected anf allowed alot of activities that hurt the community to go on on their plartform most of them have been so frsutrting to the point that, you dont need to approve them before their start playing and interrupting your browsing session, and worst still is that, you may not be able to cancel some of them and you be forced to wait ojt the time before you are able to move beyond that stage.
The internet is becoming a free traffice market for this ads and to be honest with you, alot of then are so exusting to the point that i wish i have an alternative to the current browser i am using whose ads blocking is not so effective, this have made the job to block those shady hard for me for a while now.

[Churchillvv]

Do no click on ads, especially Google ads. But people will not listen.
If you want to allow scammers and hackers to locate you to scam you or drain your wallet, continue to click on ads.

The problem is not that they stubborn most of this people who have been off their crypto assets are ignorant of this ads and how they might have gotten into it without knowing.
They usually click on ads especially when it's the first link to pop up when browsing, some times scam sites that are clone to look like the original sites seems to be the first to give result of search's hence making ignorant people go into it and by so inputting your wallet details to a scam site.

Google do not care about anybody than to make money from ads.

I feel like it's not even googles fault for this phishing site to scam people, google could not be aware of the activities of this sites. maybe the must have inspected an ad but found no threats at that point because scammers/hackers are always very smart after the inspection they can just go back and do there activities having being verified by Google for scam free ads. this what I feel might have been happening with Google ads.

[Lida93]

People do not care about ads. They do not know how dangerous ads are.

  This statement is absolutely not true. These ads have been set and structured beyond users control by the online companies the own the visited site and some even make it as a condition that you have to pay (subscription) either weekly or monthly fee to stop experiencing ads popping up while using their site. Is it what ought to be?

Ads has been an added source of making money by Google so therefore they will care less or give a deaf ear to all complaints about these ads on Google site of which some have turned out to be data phishing ads. Some ads even pop up unexpected that you unintentionally tap at it while trying to do another task and it can be dangerous when such spontaneous ads clicking happens with a phishing or bugging ads that can coat us risk of our assets.  Surfing the internet now has now become unsafe as you have to pay apt attention to every small detail because ads  is now been used for a buccaneering expedition to our data and assets.