The last time I opened the Wired site was like 10 years ago, it's still telling me "You’ve read your last free article." See you in 2036 ig
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
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Ha. Here's the direct source: https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/
This reads like a dystopian fever dream, fuck me.
Literally none of that should be surprising for people who have a basic understanding of how the WWW works.
Which, I'm starting to realize, is a depressively low fraction of the general population. I was taught this in middle school, for fuck's sake.
You were taught about zero-click mercenary spyware attacks in middle school? Neat.
No, we were taught about HTTP, the fundamentals of hypertext and how it gets rendered, how embedded code (Flash at the time; yes, I'm old) runs in the browser, and the concept of the digital footprint. The cybersecurity implications were obvious.
Actually, I have to correct myself. Some of this was taught in the 7th or 8th year of primary school, around ages 12-14. I was fortunate to be born in a country, at the right time, where the public education system was still worth something. My heart bleeds when I hear of what goes on across the ocean.
I guessed that an Israeli company would be behind this, and I was right. Am I antisemite?
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“You’ve read your last free article.”
Do they know how ominous that sounds? It reads like they got mad at my freeloading and sent out a hitman.
Or they know the date and time of your very natural death...
You've read your last free article. We suggest going to the doctor for a full workup. Screen for everything. Get a will drawn up. Hug your kids.
Hug your kids
...while you still can.
Wow they gave you a time to come back, they have just said I have surpassed my 5 free articles for years now, I think it is because I am using a “DNS sink hole”/adblocker I do not care enough to turn my pihole off just to try and read it.
I have gotten a static IP, and clear my cache regularly since my last attempt to read a wired article so it is not that they are using anything to see that I have tried them before.
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Tells me that too. Then I copy the url into my readeck instance and it pulls the article for me and gives me a better reading experience.
Unbound on OPNsense ftw
I switched to pihole. Just found it.. easier.
I started on pihole, then the devs messed it all up and made it complicated, so I started using unbound on OPNsense and holy poop was it so much easier for me. But I mean as long as everyone is using something, that's what really matters. Don't let these corporations take even an inch
I love Unbound bro. Gives a neat list of the noisest domains which I can quickly add to my list if I don't need that site 😌
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The situation is so concerning, he notes, because there isn’t much that people can do to protect themselves from zero-click ad attacks other than blocking ads as thoroughly as possible on all websites and platforms—a fact that intelligence agencies like the NSA and CIA seem to know all too well.
Or disable JavaScript
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I like technitium. Way better than pi hole.
In what way(s)?
It’s a more complete dns server. You can more easily do dns over https, set up zones, and custom dns entries are a lot easier imo.
In summary it’s more focused on being dns, the ad blocking is a feature on top. You also don’t have to manually configure unbound for recursive dns like you do pi hole. Etc etc
Oh. I guess if you just want dead simple ad blocking, pi hole is still the way
I'd prefer Adguard Home. Does the same thing but also supports encrypted DoT/DoQ/DoH upstreams. And the UI looks a bit neater for me
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What is a DNS sinkhole and how is it related to the content of the article? Didn't seem to mention DNS
What is a DNS sinkhole
A DNS sinkhole is a little program that sits in between your computer and the DNS server that provides your internet lookups. It looks at all of your DNS requests in an unencrypted format. If a DNS lookup from your browser, mobile app or any other internet connected machine matches an entry it has in its "blocklist" then it returns a value of 0.0.0.0 (or some other customizable value including NXDOMAIN). But if the DNS entry is not on the blocklist, then that request will be forwarded to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8), Quad9 (9.9.9.9) or other DNS provider and get an accurate value for the DNS lookup.
Most of the time, the blocklists consist of adware domains such as Google Ad Services, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, etc. This has the effect of removing ads from devices that normally are unable to block ads such as ads inside mobile apps, ads in Roku, etc.
how is it related to the content of the article?
The article indicated that the malicious spyware was transmitted through viewable ads on the target's mobile device. This is combated most effectively by using a DNS sinkhole.
I should note that the article does not mention if current blocklists would have thwarted this attack. However, it does say that the ads were transmitted, in some instances, via Google Ad services, which these blocklists do effectively target.
Tldr; pi-hole
Unfortunately a lot of the magnificent 7 of advertisers have caught on to this and will serve ads dynamically in many of their platforms.
I've heard that before but I haven't seen an ad in years. But I'm probably not the norm. Between userscripts, ad-removing frontends like invidious and choosing services like Lemmy over the competition, you can pretty safely remove ads from most platforms. Of course, Jellyfin helps 😂
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This sounds like AdGuard Home is an example?
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Is Adguard Home still a good option for this kind of thing?
Yes, from what I understand. They are using ad services from the big ad companies, and because capitalism sucks they are completely fine with selling the spots.
if you do not have a system to VPN into your home I would suggest get a firewall (preferably one you can install openWRT of opnSense on) and VPN into your LAN when away from home.
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Nowadays the internet is pretty much unusable without ad blockers/dns sinkholes
Love blocky. Seems like it flies under the radar.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| AP | WiFi Access Point |
| ARP | Address Resolution Protocol, translates IPs to MAC addresses |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #134 for this comm, first seen 17th Oct 2026, 01:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Calling it ad blocking undersells it. The ad network is the delivery path in that report, so blocking at DNS is a security layer, not tidiness. The thing I'm building goes a step further: it holds tracker connections open instead of refusing them, so they waste their own time instead of retrying instantly. Has anyone tried tarpitting at home? I'm curious whether it broke smart TVs or apps that phone home hard.
The problem with tarpitting is that apps will try to download the ads before showing you the content, and you will be more annoyed than before
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I only know the basics of networking, so I've been wondering why this "DNS-sinkhole" functionality can't simply be implemented directly in private routers (as some kind of blocklist) instead of adding a new device to your network. Do routers not support this for technical or security reasons?
Routers are usually hardware level optimized for throughput, filtering is inherently computationally expensive compared to routing (not crazy expensive just more than usually fits an FPGA), especially if you have to keep up multi-gigabit throughput
You could totally do it at the router, it would just become a more expensive piece of hardware and most people choose to cheap out
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Most consumer routers don't offer this functionality out of the box, likely because manufacturers don't consider it essential for most users. There's no major technical reason it couldn't be built in though. You can already set up DNS sinkholing with OPNsense or pfSense if you don't mind running and managing your own router.
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