dingusxmcgee

quick new blog today on RecipeLister! This one seems to be making the rounds the past couple of days, and I had a little bit more detail to add, so hope you enjoy 😊

https://blog.dingusxmcgee.com/blog/2025/06/06/Recipe-For-Adware.html

Recipe For Adware​

On June 2 2025, @xorist posted a screenshot of some javascript code from a ‘recipe app’ in the InvokeRE community discord. What followed was a rabbit hole of confusion, mysterious functionality, dashed dreams, more confusion, and ultimately culminated in Yahoo Search.

Malware Analysis with Dingus
Jun 6 at 4:07pmWeb
Show threaddingusxmcgeeJun 8

I updated this blog with some more details, including the discussion around adware versus malware and a brief look at lookupktichen, which seems to be a precursor to RecipeLister.

Some interesting discussion in X and in the InvokeRE discord about adware versus malware etc and I definitely agree I “mislabeled” it in my initial desire to categorize.

Always good to chat and learn from others :). Thanks to @struppigel for the excellent discussion!

Show threadCindʎ Xiao 🍉 8964 36Jun 6
@dingusxmcgee Great writeup! Why does adware always have to be so extra 😭😭😭
Show threaddingusxmcgeeJun 6
@cxiao thank you! It seems like a LOT of work so what I assume is only a little payoff??? I don’t know enough about it but it really doesn’t seem worth it 😂
Show threadCindʎ Xiao 🍉 8964 36Jun 6
@dingusxmcgee yeahhhh paradoxically adware tends to be super terrible to analyze. I think there's probably something about the economics of it? Like if you create something that's as widespread as possible you end up needing to have it be resistant to automated analysis and blocking efforts. IDK, smarter people than me have thought about this, i just cry in front of ida