Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware - The Citizen Lab

Key Findings Devices at international news network Al Jazeera were infected with mercenary spyware from Candiru (rebranded as “Integrity Labs”) via targeted online advertisements. We provide the first public technical confirmation of a zero-click mercenary spyware attack delivered via targeted advertising, which we call AdFection. The malicious advertisements were purchased by Discover-Tech, an Israeli company that presents itself as a legitimate advertising company, but which we found operates as a facilitator for multiple mercenary spyware partners. Discover-Tech operates a platform called Controlium that enables its mercenary partners to de-anonymize, fingerprint, and automatically infect devices the moment an advertisement is rendered — a form of zero-click attack. Analysis of four billion Discover-Tech bidding records shows that during a four-month period, the company’s ads were shown on almost 200,000 unique websites and Android/iOS apps in dozens of countries. Discover-Tech’s ads also covertly directed millions of devices to contact Candiru’s servers, likely for large-scale tracking and reconnaissance. Discover-Tech is linked to mercenary spyware and intelligence threat actors beyond Candiru, including Intelos and Bindecy. A separate threat actor we call DARK CARTOGRAPHER is using Discover-Tech’s infrastructure to exploit vulnerabilities across numerous mobile carriers to link device advertising IDs with phone numbers, mass-deanonymizing internet users. We will detail our findings concerning this threat actor in a separate forthcoming report. Discover-Tech has appeared on lists of “certified” and “approved” vendors maintained by Google and advertising industry association IAB Europe, and has served ads via major networks such as Google, Yandex, and Beeswax. Discover-Tech has also leveraged the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent frameworks to target users within the European Union. Discover-Tech’s mass abuse, privacy invasion, and facilitation for mercenary spyware attacks illustrates structural flaws with the online advertising system, which failed to detect or prevent the abuse documented in this report. We call on regulators to investigate whether Discover-Tech and Candiru/Integrity Labs violated applicable laws, and make recommendations to lawmakers, defenders, and the advertising industry on how to stop AdFection-style attacks and espionage. We disclosed our findings to ad vendors and industry organizations. Google, IAB Europe, Beeswax, Vungle (Liftoff), and Eskimi took action to disconnect Discover-Tech’s access to the digital advertising ecosystem. Other ad vendors we found to be involved in Discover-Tech’s operations did not respond to our request for comment within the timeline provided. We are also actively working with vendors to mitigate DARK CARTOGRAPHER’s mass-deanonymization attack. 1. Introduction This section provides an overview of the online advertising ecosystem, and summarizes our findings about Discover-Tech. The Online Advertising Ecosystem is Ripe for Abuse When a user sees an ad on an app or a website, it is likely the result of a real-time auction, where advertisers bid on the chance to show that specific user that specific ad. So-called Real-Time Bidding (RTB) auctions, which are hosted on ad exchanges operated by companies including Google, take place hundreds of billions of times a day. In less than a second, the user’s device initiates a bid request, advertisers submit their bids, and the ad exchange determines the winner of the auction and pushes the ad to the user. Besides an image or video, an online ad can also contain code that runs within the app or browser that shows the ad. Both advertisers and publishers of apps and websites use ad vendors that act as their intermediaries in these auctions. Advertisers typically buy ads via a so-called Demand-Side Platform (DSP), and a Supply-Side Platform (SSP) sells ad inventory on websites and apps. Malicious actors make use of two interrelated facets of the online advertising ecosystem: The advertising ecosystem collects a lot of data and enables individual-level targeting: When a publisher of an app or website wishes to show ads, they add code from an SSP to their app or site. This code collects and shares granular information about the user and their device with ad exchanges to solicit bids for the ad slots. This information can include device identifiers and characteristics, precise location, and IP address data, as well as data about the app or website, and specifications about the ad slot. The DSP or advertiser then examines this information and decides whether they wish to bid on the impression in order to show an ad. The auction system is designed to enable targeting single individuals based on their mobile advertising ID, cookie ID, IP address, and other identifiers. The advertising ecosystem allows many different third parties to run code in apps and websites: It is tempting to think of an online ad as, simply, a video or image. However, ads themselves may contain code from the advertiser, DSP, and other parties, and run it in the app or browser while the ad is shown to the user, for example to track users, ad impressions, and clicks. Code run by advertisers, DSPs, SSPs, and other third parties within apps and websites is often referred to as “tags”, “pixels”, “SDKs”, or “third-party tracking” more generally. Exploiting Advertising Tech for Surveillance The totality of information gleaned from ad auctions is quite valuable. A company with access to auction data can track users without their knowledge as they move around in physical space, or switch between cellular, Wi-Fi, and VPNs, by observing how bid requests tied to a specific identifier change location or IP address over time. In fact, the surveillance industry sells access to so-called ad intelligence (ADINT) platforms that leverage this sort of data, often combined with third-party tracking data. In recent years, several investigations and media reports have uncovered vendors that sell ADINT to defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies. Zero-Click Spyware Delivered via Targeted Ads: AdFection Beyond passive data harvesting, malicious parties can also exploit this infrastructure to target certain individuals based on user data included in ad auctions and then run malicious code on their devices. Advertisers or DSPs may run HTML and JavaScript code when an ad is shown to the user. That code retrieves additional JavaScript code, which may, in turn, load further code, such as a browser exploit to install spyware. Since the code can contain identifiers for the user or their device, arbitrary JavaScript code can be sent precisely to a single user’s device. Our research in this report indicates that this architecture is indeed abused to facilitate the delivery of zero-click targeted spyware, and that the simple display of a targeted ad is enough for infection. There has been some reporting about the intersection between spyware and the advertising ecosystem. However, the specific ways mercenary spyware companies plug into the ads ecosystem to target particular users have remained largely secret. This report exposes zero-click spyware delivered via targeted ads, which we call AdFection, and is the first technical demonstration that mercenary spyware is being distributed via targeted advertisements. Discover-Tech is a Bridge Between Mercenary Spyware Companies and the Advertising Ecosystem We present technical evidence that the Israel-based company Discover-Tech, while purporting to be a legitimate advertising company, appears to be a front for large-scale ad espionage abuse, including the automatic delivery of mercenary spyware when ads are displayed to a target and the mass profiling and deanonymization of users. The company serves as a bridge between ad vendors and the mercenary spyware ecosystem. In fact, it appears that serving as this bridge is Discover-Tech’s primary purpose. Its platform, Controlium, allows malicious actors to precisely profile and de-anonymize millions of individuals, fingerprint their devices, and target them with a form of zero-click hacking, where their devices can be automatically infected when an ad is displayed to them. Discover-Tech appears to work with multiple mercenary spyware, hacking, and advertising vendors, connecting the spyware industry to the online advertising ecosystem. As we detail in this report, Discover-Tech ads are used to infect and profile on behalf of mercenary spyware vendor Candiru. We also detail connections between Discover-Tech and another mercenary hacking company, Bindecy, as well as connections with Intelos, a mercenary ADINT firm. What is Discover-Tech and How Does It Operate? Discover-Tech is led by its CEO Dekel Boni, who has a background in digital advertising. Eric Banoun, whom Haaretz describes as “one of the pioneers of offensive cyber in Israel”, joined the company’s board of directors soon after it was founded in 2020 and remained there until 2025. Between 2020 and March 2026, Discover-Tech’s shareholders included a company linked to Sara Hamou, who has managed the corporate network of the spyware group Intellexa. Discover-Tech appears to place advertisements using several techniques. Firstly, the company operates a platform called MyDSP, which interfaces with online ad vendors including Google, Yandex, Vungle (Liftoff), and Sunteng. Secondly, separately from MyDSP, it purchases ads via the ad vendors Eskimi and Comcast-owned Beeswax (Freewheel). A large number of ads placed by Discover-Tech contain a script tag pointing back to what the company refers to as a “NOAS server” (also called a “getAd server”). This tag causes the ad, when rendered, to connect back to Discover-Tech, submit advertising identifiers for the user (either a cookie ID or a mobile ad ID), and automatically execute any JavaScript code returned. The NOAS server decides, apparently based on a