Explore Confiant's Q2 2020 Demand Quality Report for the insights you need to protect your revenue and safeguard your audiences.
The U.S. Security violation rate declined significantly from Q1 to Q2, driven by massive improvements at one of the largest SSPs as well as a general shift in threat activity toward Europe.
European markets—Germany and Italy in particular—saw far higher rates of Security issues than the U.S.
In fact, some of the most serious threats we see, such as Fizzcore, were largely confined to Europe.
How did the industry fare in Q2 2020?
Q2 Violation Rates by Country
Violation Rates by Header Bidding Framework
SSP-F’s Security violation rate more than doubled from Q1 to Q2, and was over 30x that of SSP-C, the best performer in the quarter. SSP-M retained the 2nd to worst spot from Q1.
When under sustained attack, SSPs had days where over 1 in 10 impressions was a Security risk, putting publishers and users at considerable risk.
Security Violation Rate by SSP
Daily Maximum Malicious Rate by SSP
Most Sensitive Ad Categories
This relatively new attacker has been buying large volumes of traffic since Q4 2019 to execute forced redirects to carrier-branded scams. The primary mode of operation for Nephos7 is to churn and burn dozens of CDN subdomains, sometimes for a single push. They leverage well known CDN providers in order to avoid registering multiple domains.
This is a common tactic used by malvertisers who try to fly under the radar, but Nephos7 relies on it quite heavily.
eGobbler runs their campaigns in big waves that usually gravitate around the weekends. Lately, the majority of their activity has been centered around European countries, where they deliver disruptive, highly targeted carrier-branded scams.
This is a sophisticated attacker that has been observed to exploit sandbox bypasses in both Chrome and Webkit in order to maximize the impact of their campaigns. Learn more about eGobbler.
FizzCore is a significant newcomer. An attacker that sits at the increasingly blurred boundary between malvertising and deceptive ads, FizzCore has perfected the art of audit circumvention to exploit the gullibility of aspiring cryptocurrency investors. Eschewing forced redirects, FizzCore uses evasion techniques to bypass ad quality reviews and drive users to cybersecurity scam sites.
Evasion techniques include cloaking (display of fake ad creatives and landing pages to ad quality scanners), reputation and relationship building in the ad ecosystem, and carefully crafted localized campaigns using celebrity endorsement clickbait. Learn more about FizzCore.
This relatively new attacker has been buying large volumes of traffic since Q4 2019 to execute forced redirects to carrier-branded scams. The primary mode of operation for Nephos7 is to churn and burn dozens of CDN subdomains, sometimes for a single push. They leverage well known CDN providers in order to avoid registering multiple domains.
This is a common tactic used by malvertisers who try to fly under the radar, but Nephos7 relies on it quite heavily.
eGobbler runs their campaigns in big waves that usually gravitate around the weekends. Lately, the majority of their activity has been centered around European countries, where they deliver disruptive, highly targeted carrier-branded scams.
This is a sophisticated attacker that has been observed to exploit sandbox bypasses in both Chrome and Webkit in order to maximize the impact of their campaigns. Learn more about eGobbler.
FizzCore is a significant newcomer. An attacker that sits at the increasingly blurred boundary between malvertising and deceptive ads, FizzCore has perfected the art of audit circumvention to exploit the gullibility of aspiring cryptocurrency investors. Eschewing forced redirects, FizzCore uses evasion techniques to bypass ad quality reviews and drive users to cybersecurity scam sites.
Evasion techniques include cloaking (display of fake ad creatives and landing pages to ad quality scanners), reputation and relationship building in the ad ecosystem, and carefully crafted localized campaigns using celebrity endorsement clickbait. Learn more about FizzCore.
