A sophisticated gaming tech fraud is charging advertisers for ad impressions never seen by real humans.

Operated by cybercriminals using a shared tech framework called UniSkyWalking, the scheme, “is sophisticated, coordinated and very difficult to detect,” according to DoubleVerify’s fraud lab.

The fraud lab researchers discovered it “after noticing a number of apps with abnormally high impression rates and unreasonable click behaviour.”

It involves dozens of fraudulent apps concealing over 80 fake gaming websites that generate millions of manipulated ad impressions.

The ad scam used embedded hidden web browsers inside various iOS gaming apps. Some of those fake gaming websites named by DoubleVerify include: Xiaofun, Cocogames, Mimmimapp and Coolmount. Check if you or your kids have them on your phone.

These apps are downloadable in the App Store and appear legitimate. Their games are playable. But when a user opens one, the app also secretly launches hidden websites on the user’s iOS device. As the user plays a game in the app, the hidden sites run in the background, undetected, serving ads no one sees.

The ad fraud technique employs hidden browser technology to render its websites invisible to users and uses ‘touch hijacking’ to generate premium ad formats.

Profit sharing is coordinated among multiple fraud participants, according the the research. Advertisers are billed for clicks that no humans ever see.

The SkyWalk fraudsters use AI-generated content to make their fake websites appear legitimate during audits, even though the sites receive no organic traffic. In auction data, the scheme misrepresents mobile app traffic as website traffic to evade Open Measurement SDK, the industry-standard detection tool that monitors in-app ads but not browser-based ads.

DoubleVerify has reported a surge in AI-powered ad fraud this year, including a spike in malicious apps. On iOS, the average volume of fraudulent apps DV identified during the first three quarters of 2025 is over three times that of the previous five years.

Ths fraud impacts marketers by wasting ad spend while delivering no brand awareness. It inflates performance metrics, which can skew campaign optimisation efforts.

Phone game players are also unwitting victims. While they play games on these malicious apps, the hidden websites running in the background are draining their devices’ battery power, processing power and memory.

For a technical explanation of how the tech framwwork scam works, view the DoubleVerify Fraud Lab report here.