Online advertisement blocker detection: A look at the state of the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Online advertisement blocker detection: A look at the state of the art for counter-detection and a proof-of-concept for new approaches

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Directed by Llu´

ıs Garrido Facultat de Matem` atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona

Undergraduate thesis Mathematics and Computer Science Degree

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Table of Contents

1 Context 2 State of the art 3 Motivation and objectives 4 Proposal 5 Implementation 6 Results and conclusions 7 Demonstration

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Context: Online advertisement blocking

Online advertising has been used by a multitude of websites as a source of revenue. However, in the recent years, there has been a huge rise in adoption of advertisement blocking software (ad-blockers). Reasons include: Avoiding distractions while surfing the web Reduced data usage and increased performance Association of advertisement with privacy and security threats (tracking/malvertisement)

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Context: Online advertisement blocking

Figure: Adoption of ad-blocking among internet users. Source: PageFair

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Context: Online advertisement blocking detection

As a reaction, some websites have started adopting ad-blocker detection techniques, which aim to detect whether the user that accesses the website has an ad-blocker installed, and change its behavior. As a further reaction, there have been some initiatives by ad-blocker creators and user communities to create anti-ad-blocker detection software.

Figure: Sample ad-blocking detector

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Context: Online advertisement blocking

Figure: States of the ad-blocker wars. Adapted from: The Future of Adblocking

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

State of the art: Anti-ad-blocking detection software

Techniques and software such as anti-ad-blocker detection filter lists, Anti-Adblock Killer, AdBlock Protector, etc., exist. They work by blocking, preventing execution, or ’tricking’ of ad-blocker detection scripts. As a consequence, they have limitations: They require creating a specific ”workaround” for every different ad-blocker detector. Creating such workarounds is a manual, time-consuming task which requires technical knowledge.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

State of the art: Fundamental approach to the problem

The fundamental problem is that the changes ad-blockers do to the website layout are visible to the website scripts. A generic approach needs to isolate the changes ad-blockers do to the website model from the website scripts Green: Original website nodes, Red: Ad-blocker modified nodes

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

State of the art: Research (The Future of Ad Blocking)

Recently (circa April 2017), a research paper was published that aims to do this. The researchers let the advertising scripts run normally, however, they mask the advertisements by placing overlays

• ver them.

The researchers presented techniques that allows the ad-blocker to make a part of the website model inaccessible to the website scripts, in which the overlays

• ver the advertisements can be placed.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

State of the art: Research (The Future of Ad Blocking)

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Motivation and objectives: What can be improved? The techniques presented in that paper are a huge progress in this direction, but there are further improvements that can be done.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Motivation and objectives: Layout Layout: How can we completely hide the advertisements visually, instead of covering them?

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Motivation and objectives: Privacy Privacy: Since we’re allowing the advertising scripts to run, how can their privacy impact be limited?

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Motivation and objectives: Data usage and performance Data usage and performance: Since we’re allowing advertising scripts to run, what can we do to improve data usage and performance?

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Proposal: What we aim to do. We aim to both present techniques to advance on those aspects, and implement a working prototype using those techniques.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Proposal: Layout Layout: Hide the advertisements like regular ad-blockers do (instead of masking the advertisements), but virtually redisplay them when a website script executes

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Proposal: Privacy Privacy: Restrict access to privacy-sensitive APIs, by detecting when one of those APIs is accessed by an advertiser script and returning fake data in this case

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Proposal: Data usage and performance Data usage and performance: Ability to mark a website (or part) as using anti-ad-blocker detector techniques in order to reduce the data usage and performance impact of the previous techniques

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Implementation: Core

Our prototype basically works like any other regular filter list-based ad-blocker

Technically similar to uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus, etc.

It is implemented as a man-in-the-middle proxy server that injects the ad-blocker code to the requested websites Implements the techniques we explained previously

+

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Implementation: Website script context detection

We (ab)use browser APIs and the flexibility of JavaScript to know when a script in the website starts executing. When a website script starts executing, we redisplay the advertisements. We then allow the website script to execute normally. Finally, when a website script ends executing, we hide the advertisements again.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Implementation: Website script context detection (details)

How to know when a website script starts executing?

We can ”monkey-patch” the browser DOM APIs in order to receive a callback when a website first accesses them. Redefine HTMLElement.prototype using Object.defineProperty(...)

How to know when a website script ends executing?

Some actions are delayed until the end of the scripts (e.g. resolved Promises).

Redisplaying the advertisements momentously doesn’t cause any visual effect, as long as we time it correctly to avoid a browser render.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Implementation: Advertiser script context detection

Idea: We know which scripts belong to advertisements since they are defined in the ad-blocker filter lists. We ”monkey-patch” privacy-sensitive APIs in order to receive a callback when one of them is called.

Using Object.defineProperty(...).

When we receive a call to a privacy-sensitive APIs, we check if it is one of the advertiser script by walking the call stack.

If the call comes from an advertiser script, we return fake data from it. Otherwise we call the real API.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Results

We designed an extensive test set (42 cases) against which to test our ad-blocker prototype. In addition, we tested it against ready-made ad-blocker detector solutions and real websites. We achieved good results (∼90%) with our prototype on real websites. We also traced all failures to limitations of our prototype implementation and not to fundamental limitations of our techniques. Performance impact was noticeable. Can be improved with a more thoughtful implementation.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Conclusions

We proposed and implemented techniques that aim to improve the state of the art of anti-ad-blocker detector techniques. Some work still needs to be done to refine the techniques (implementation and performance-wise) and to integrate them into mainstream ad-blockers. The ”ad-blocking wars” are not over. Publishers and advertisers can easily move to native advertising, DRM, etc.

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Demonstration

Demo time

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches

Context State of the art Motivation and objectives Proposal Implementation Results and conclusions Demonstration

Thank you!

Thank you for your attention!

Joan Bruguera Mic´

• Facultat de Matem`

atiques i Inform` atica Universitat de Barcelona Online ad-blocking detection: The state of the art for counter-detection and a PoC for new approaches