Users are being led to phishing scams by rogue cryptocurrency websites promoted by Google Ads, the company's online advertising network.
A BleepingComputer investigation claims that threat actors have advertised a phony version of Whales Market, an over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency platform that allows airdropped token trading, via Google Ads.
Users who are not cautious are led into the trap by the corrupted version of the website, which shows up as a sponsored advertisement at the top of Google search results.
Users Were Redirected to False Websites
Users who interact with the advertisement are taken to a counterfeit domain, [www.], even though it initially appears to have a real domain address. whaels. market], as opposed to the real [www.whales.market].
According to the research, Whales Market is the target of many domains registered by the attackers, at least one of which, www.whaless.market, is currently dormant.
The fake version of the Whales Market website mimics its authentic interface, tricking people into connecting their virtual wallets, which sets off malicious scripts that take their victims' cryptocurrency holdings and empty them.
This event is another in a long line of similar ones where con artists use Google's platform to advertise phony services.
Google Investigates Cryptocurrency Scammers
Google is taking action against scammers even though the perpetrators of this most recent phishing campaign are still unknown.
The business sued Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung, two Chinese nationals, earlier this month for using the Google Play store to trick users into believing they were investing in cryptocurrency.
Google disclosed that over the previous four years, it has disabled 87 fraudulent apps linked to Sun and Cheung, despite the lawsuit not revealing the identities of the exact apps in question.
Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado stated, "This is a unique opportunity for us to use our resources to actually combat bad actors who were running an extensive crypto scheme to defraud some of our users."
Google is requesting a permanent injunction against the defendants and is claiming damages in excess of $75,000. These damages include costs associated with the investigation of the breach and the maintenance of the platform's integrity and safety.
In the meanwhile, a service that allows users search wallet balances on the Bitcoin, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon, and Fantom blockchains was introduced by Google last month.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae