[krebsonsecurity]

Not sure if it's exactly the same thing as what you just mentioned, but I did write recently about criminals using paid Google ads to get their links for popular software downloads show up before even the first organic search result. And it includes the right icons and branding, and people click and are brought to a site that looks an awful lot like a site Microsoft might use to let you download Teams, and you get an information stealer program instead.

Tl;dr, there are multiple ransomware groups that are using this method to find new infostealer victims.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/09/snatch-ransom-group-expo...

[_chu1]

Are people at Google even manually reviewing any of this? They have so many people there you would imagine it's not an impossible thought.

[paulpauper]

Too bad Google seems to always be behind the curve on stopping this . Fake wallets and other scams on AdWords and Google Play store