Turning the Tide on Dark Pools? Towards Multi-Stakeholder Vulnerability Notifications in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06958v1
• Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2024 05:31:29 GMT
• Title: Turning the Tide on Dark Pools? Towards Multi-Stakeholder Vulnerability Notifications in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain
• Authors: Yash Vekaria, Rishab Nithyanand, Zubair Shafiq,
• Abstract summary: We investigate the effectiveness of vulnerability notification campaigns aimed at mitigating dark pooling. Our nine-month long multi-stakeholder notification study shows that notifications are an effective method for reducing dark pooling vulnerabilities. In addition to being the first notification study targeting the online advertising ecosystem, we are also the first to study multi-stakeholder context in vulnerability notifications.
• Score: 12.425164873579574
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Online advertising relies on a complex and opaque supply chain that involves multiple stakeholders, including advertisers, publishers, and ad-networks, each with distinct and sometimes conflicting incentives. Recent research has demonstrated the existence of ad-tech supply chain vulnerabilities such as dark pooling, where low-quality publishers bundle their ad inventory with higher-quality ones to mislead advertisers. We investigate the effectiveness of vulnerability notification campaigns aimed at mitigating dark pooling. Prior research on vulnerability notifications has primarily focused on single-stakeholder scenarios, and it is unclear whether vulnerability notifications can be effective in the multi-stakeholder ad-tech supply chain. We implement an automated vulnerability notification pipeline to systematically evaluate the responsiveness of various stakeholders, including publishers, ad-networks, and advertisers to vulnerability notifications by academics and activists. Our nine-month long multi-stakeholder notification study shows that notifications are an effective method for reducing dark pooling vulnerabilities in the online advertising ecosystem, especially when targeted towards ad-networks. Further, the sender reputation does not impact responses to notifications from activists and academics in a statistically different way. In addition to being the first notification study targeting the online advertising ecosystem, we are also the first to study multi-stakeholder context in vulnerability notifications.

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