The FBI, Google and 20 tech organizations teamed up to bring down a giant (3ve) cybernetic used by criminals to create fake views and click.
For those who do not know what fake clikcs means, it's a method used to trick advertising networks. The above network has been operating for the last four years and has earned millions of dollars in revenue for its creators.
In addition to a coordinated crackdown to take down the network's botnets, the US Department of Justice also announced an indictment against eight suspects believed to be behind the project. Three of them have already been arrested and are expected to be extradited on USA.
According to a DOJ indictment and a white paper released by Google and Cyber-Security White Ops, the eight suspects are believed to be the primary administrators of the particular fraud system that is believed to work at least from 2014.
Researchers and the FBI said the administrators used different programs to create ad views and clicks. They used tricks such as hiring other botnets and creating their own botnets hosted on different data centers to hide their true IP addresses. They even created legitimate pages for displaying ads as well as for controlling bots.
According to the FBI, in one of these tricks they used more than 1.900 servers to host MethBot / Miuref / Boaxxe bots.
The bots were configured to mimic the traffic coming from both desktops and mobile devices.
Researchers report that gang managed to extend the bot to more than 700.000 computers, infecting them with Kovter malware. The bot has secretly opened browser windows to load websites that have, of course, brought more profits to criminals.
In one publishing on the blog of the company, Google today revealed that it was aware of the features and functions of the bot last year. Google has said that it has assembled a team of big technology names: Microsoft, ESET, Symantec, Proofpoint, Trend Micro, F-Secure, Malwarebytes, CenturyLink, MediaMath, White Ops, Amazon, Adobe, Trade Desk, Oath, The Shadowserver Foundation, and National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance.
The names of the 8 arrested: Aleksandr Zhukov (38, Russia), Boris Timokhin (39 years old from Russia), Mikhail Andreev (34 years old from Russia), Denis Avdeev (40 years old from Russia), Dmitry Novikov (??years old from Russia), Sergey Ovsyannikov (30 years old from Kazakhstan), Aleksandr Isaev (31 years old from Russia), and Yevgeniy Timchenko (30 years old from Kazakhstan).
__________________________
- Airfish 8 is flying by Wigetworks
- Debian 9.6: Available the sixth point release of Stretch
- Bitdefender Rescue CD: bootable free for everyone
- Sonar free Microsoft tool for web analytics
