We're all familiar with targeted banners these days. Visit a shoe site and suddenly all banners in various web sites are shoe-related.
It seems the banner scammers/hijackers have figured this out too. Recently I noticed suspicious Adwords banners originating from a site called adnxs.com.
My guess is that the malware authors use Adwords or similar networks or sub-networks to target users with certain keywords, for example shoes. They may upload legitimate ads in the beginning and may even run them for a while to gain the network's trust. But then the switch happens and malware ads such as below are displayed.
To a lay user, a banner such as above may look legitimate enough to click which will inevitably lead to a malware download and it's game-over for that user. The banner obviously has the tell tale look of being a scam, with the "importent" update it purports to install.
Hard to say if adnxs.com or similar sub-networks are in on the scam or just look the other way as long as the money keeps coming. Whatever the case, browsers and anti-virus programs seem unable to stop these annoying and harmful banners.
Give a few Sats