Massive click-fraud botnet closed

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Here’s an interesting article about click fraud botnet being shut down. What’s interesting is the size of the thing. It also makes you wonder, just how many of these things are out there operating. This botnet has 50,000 computers infected. That’s to say that 50,000 “zombie” computers were merrily clicking away at ads, all at the advertiser’s expense!

Panda Software says botnets are huge business:

“Botnets are part of the cyber-crime business model, as they are normally hired or sold to third parties to carry out malicious actions such as sending spam, stealing confidential data or installing other types of malware”, explains Luis Corrons, head of PandaLabs, adding: “This particular case represents a variant of that model, as it seems that bot authors are obtaining financial benefits directly, swindling companies that pay for each click. The fact that companies pay a certain amount of money for each click on their ads, combined with the number of bots involved in the swindle, gives an idea of the huge proportions of this fraud”.

Somehow these guys have accounts apparently with the major ad networks. The press releases are careful not to mention who was targeted, but it’s likely it would be Google Adsense because of the huge size of the program.

The fraud is simple in design. The publisher signs up for accounts, then has the botnets click on the ads, so he receiveds the direct benefit of the clicks. How any of this traffic could look real to an allegedly sophisticated fraud detection network is beyond me. Undoubtedly, worse variations of the Clickbot.A virus may end up in the wild. A large enough botnet could destroy the entire legitimacy of the AdSense program. You wonder how much of a role extortion will end up playing in this one as well? Once the fraudsters are loose in a program, you already have a rotting ship. Google has had extremely slack screening measures for publishers for too long now. In may end up costing them big in the long run.

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