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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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 Figure: Sample ad-blocking to detect whether the user that detector 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 . Joan Bruguera Mic´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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 over 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 over the advertisements can be placed. Joan Bruguera Mic´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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´ o 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