Ads on Colouring Pages Website Lead to Installs, Explicit Content

Ads on Colouring Pages Website Lead to Installs, Explicit Content

Today, we came across a website called “Best Arts Wallpaper Online 2015” which offers colouring pages intended to be printed / drawn on by the smaller members of your family.

The site features Minions (From Despicable Me), My Little Pony, Batman, Mario, Looney Tunes and more – clearly, there’s a wide range of interests on offer.

Shall we take a look?

wallarts(dot)tk/justin-bieber-coloring-pages/

Colouring book ad

The page is overlaid with a transparent full-window ad (the page doesn’t look as grey once the advert is gone) – you can see the “x” in the top right hand corner. Clicking the visible banner in the middle will take you to the ad (reasonably enough).

However, clicking anywhere else on the page with the exception of the “x” will still cause it to act as though the ad in the middle of the page had been clicked – and you’ll also have the possibility of another window opening containing entirely unrelated content.

Some examples of the adverts / landing pages we were taken to include:

1) An iLivid Chrome extension

iLivid for Chrome

 

2) A Search By Zooms Chrome extension

More Chrome

3) A survey “win”

4) A Russian dating website

Dating

5) A PC repair tool

 

6) A pornographic website with links to multiple domains

Uh oh.

Clearly, this isn’t somewhere you want the intended audience hanging out as they grab pages for you to print. There’s no real way to know what they may end up installing, and as for the last example – who knows where some of those URLs might lead.

Here’s some safer examples of colouring in for you and your family to make use of:

Disney – Colouring in BBC – Crafts and colouring in Crayola – Colouring in LEGO – Colouring in Nick Jr – Colouring in

Basic searches for “Colouring pages / colouring books” in search engines typically return a lot of “non-official” sites back along with the above, so it definitely pays to keep an eye what you’re trading in return for some print out pictures – whether it be installs, surveys or linkdumps of content you’d rather not have on your computer.

Christopher Boyd (Thanks to Jovi for additional research)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Boyd

Former Director of Research at FaceTime Security Labs. He has a very particular set of skills. Skills that make him a nightmare for threats like you.