These days, an AI-generated fake image keeps popping up on many well-known websites, unfortunately also on Heise Online: Markus Lanz, apparently taken away in handcuffs, is intended to tempt clicks that lead unsuspecting surfers to fraudulent websites. For example, one of the targets was the site die-immobilienbewertung.com, which was blocked by the CDN operator Cloudflare due to suspected phishing and has since been cleared.
Behind such tricks are usually organized gang fraudsters who want to elicit personal information about your income, property and bank details in a two-stage attack, in order to then gain access to your accounts via phishing. Others aim to lure you into risky investments, such as highly speculative cryptocurrencies.
When it comes to phishing via ads, the fact that the ads are played by external service providers on almost all advertising-financed websites plays into the hands of the crooks. Programmatic advertising dynamically selects the presented ad based on several parameters, depending, among other things, on the interests of the surfer and the topic of the respective page.
Although the Heise admins block such questionable advertising after notification, it immediately reappears with a different source address (URL). This smack-the-mole is unwinnable, so the only advice left is don’t click.
Naturally, Markus Lanz is not very happy about this kind of attention: He regularly meets people who assume that he has been dismissed as moderator because he was too critical of the government.
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