Malware in ads doesn’t announce itself. Bad actors aren’t knocking on the front door or ringing the doorbell; they’re slipping through trusted ad channels, hiding inside legitimate code and speaking in a language designed to deceive. To visitors, it looks like a glitch, a slow page, or a sudden redirect. To publishers, it seems like normal ad delivery until something goes wrong and the visitor complaints grow.
Uncovering these threats requires unraveling the secret code. That’s why we built The Malvertising Decoder. It’s a guide for publishers to uncover the hidden ad threats in digital ads.
It’s your decoder ring for malvertising, a guide to help publishers crack the code. We reveal how bad actors hide inside trusted systems, how they manipulate ad delivery, and how publishers can read the subtle signs that expose these tactics.
Malvertising is built to disappear into the background, typically only activating under specific conditions or targeting certain users, devices, or geographies. The malicious code hides behind time delays and conditional logic, waiting for the right moment to strike. What looks like a safe creative in testing can change the instant it goes live, turning a normal ad call into an active attack.
Our Unmasking Malvertising series has explored how attackers exploit the ad ecosystem through key tactics: obfuscation, auto-redirects, and cloaking. In these blogs, we explored how bad actors hide their code in plain sight, how malicious ads steal sessions without a click, and how bad actors deliver different content to real visitors versus scanners, respectively. The Malvertising Decoder builds on those lessons, giving publishers a tool to identify these hidden patterns before they steal visitors away from their sites.
HUMAN’s Malvertising Defense protects publishers from costly malvertising attacks, delivering control over creatives, preserving reputation and revenue, and securing a safe experience for visitors. Using page-level code, it evaluates digital creatives and landing pages at run time, allowing ads to render while blocking malicious behaviors from executing. Audiences are protected. Partner trust stays strong. Impressions are preserved. Bad actors still pay for the ads. HUMAN’s behavioral approach delivers stronger detection with fewer false positives, reduced operational overhead, and less added latency than bulky blocklist-based solutions.
Through our self-serve option, any publisher can turn this protection on for free. It’s not a trial: it’s the same blocking and intelligence our enterprise clients use, free for up to two million page views each month. Malvertising thrives in secrecy. The Malvertising Decoder gives publishers the clarity to see what was designed to stay hidden, revealing the patterns, behaviors, and code behind every attack. With the right insight, you can stay ahead of bad actors and keep your audience, partners, and revenue safe.
Block Malvertising Threats in Real-Time
HUMAN gives publishers real-time visibility to detect and block malvertising threats before they reach your users—completely free
