{"669540":{"#nid":"669540","#data":{"type":"news","title":"New Tool Skewers Socially Engineered Attack Ads","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u0022\u003Cem\u003EWarning! Your computer is infected with a virus. Click the button below to take immediate action!\u003C\/em\u003E\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EOnline ads like this are all too familiar and often the opening salvo in personal cyberattacks that can lead to unwanted software or other malicious downloads.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech researchers are countering deceptive online ads with a pioneering solution designed to challenge the rising threat of online social engineering attacks by cutting them off at the source.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ETrident, created by Ph.D. student\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EZheng Yang\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;and his team of researchers, is an add-on compatible with Google Chrome that has proven to block these ads with nearly 100% efficiency.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAdvertisements are fertile ground for scams and fraudulent schemes. While such networks may offer better pay to websites than industry giants like Google and Facebook, their advertisements often employ tactics that lure unsuspecting users into compromising situations.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe goal is to identify suspicious ads that often take users to malicious websites or trigger unwanted software downloads,\u201d said Yang. \u0022Trident operates within Chrome\u2019s developer tools and uses a sophisticated AI to assess potential threats.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe team compiled a vast dataset from over 100,000 websites to build Trident, including ten low-tier ad networks. This comprehensive data collection helped identify 1,479 instances of attacks encompassing a range of six common types of web-based social engineering attacks. These include:\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cul\u003E\r\n\t\u003Cli\u003ETech-support scams\u003C\/li\u003E\r\n\t\u003Cli\u003EUnwanted software downloads\u003C\/li\u003E\r\n\t\u003Cli\u003EScareware\u003C\/li\u003E\r\n\t\u003Cli\u003EDating scams\u003C\/li\u003E\r\n\t\u003Cli\u003ENotification spam\u003C\/li\u003E\r\n\t\u003Cli\u003EPrize scams\u003C\/li\u003E\r\n\u003C\/ul\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe remarkable outcome of their efforts is the sustained performance of Trident. Over the course of a year, the tool consistently achieved a nearly perfect detection rate of malicious ads, ensuring users\u0027 safety by minimizing the risk of interacting with harmful content.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EImpressively, this achievement came with a meager 2.57% false positive rate, demonstrating the accuracy and effectiveness of Trident\u0027s machine-learning capabilities.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.usenix.org\/conference\/usenixsecurity23\/presentation\/yang-zheng\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003ETRIDENT: Towards Detecting and Mitigating Web-based Social Engineering Attacks\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;was presented at the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium in August. Contributors to this project include Georgia Tech Ph.D. students\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EJoey Allen\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;and\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EMatthew Landen\u003C\/strong\u003E, Adjunct Assistant Professor\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003ERoberto Perdisci\u003C\/strong\u003E, and Professor\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EWenke Lee\u003C\/strong\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech researchers have developed Trident, a Google Chrome add-on that efficiently blocks deceptive online ads used in social engineering attacks, achieving nearly 100% accuracy in detecting and preventing malicious ads while maintaining a low false positive rate.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A new tool developed at Georgia Tech is proving to be highly effective against online malicious ads."}],"uid":"32045","created_gmt":"2023-09-08 14:27:57","changed_gmt":"2024-05-13 14:46:52","author":"Ben Snedeker","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2023-09-06T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2023-09-06T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"671649":{"id":"671649","type":"image","title":"A graphic depicting a pop-up ad blocker for the internet.","body":null,"created":"1694183287","gmt_created":"2023-09-08 14:28:07","changed":"1694183287","gmt_changed":"2023-09-08 14:28:07","alt":"A graphic depicting a pop-up ad blocker for the internet.","file":{"fid":"254750","name":"pop-up ads_blocker story.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2023\/09\/08\/pop-up%20ads_blocker%20story.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2023\/09\/08\/pop-up%20ads_blocker%20story.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":92017,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2023\/09\/08\/pop-up%20ads_blocker%20story.jpeg?itok=cIHzYCGY"}}},"media_ids":["671649"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"430601","name":"Institute for Information Security and Privacy"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"},{"id":"10199","name":"Daily Digest"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"145171","name":"Cybersecurity"},{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71881","name":"Science and Technology"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Popham, Communications Officer\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Cybersecurity \u0026amp; Privacy\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}