The FBI, Google and 20 technology organizations have teamed up to launch a giant network (3ve) in cyberspace that was used by criminals to create false views and clicks.
For those who don't know what fake clikcs means, it is a method that usesfor defrauding ad networks. The above network has been operating for the past four years and has generated millions of dollars in revenue for its creators.
In addition to a concerted intervention to remove network botnets, the US Department of Justice has also announced an indictment against eight suspects believed to be behind the project. Three of them have already been arrested and expected to be released in the United States.
According to a DOJ indictment and a white paper released by Google and the company Cyber-Security White Ops, the eight suspects are believed to be the main operators of the particular fraud scheme believed to have been operating since at least 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 revealed today that it was aware of the bot's capabilities and functions since last year. Google said it composed in a group work comprising big tech 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.
Τα ονόματα των 8 που συνελήφθησαν: Aleksandr Zhukov (38, Russia), Boris Timokhin (39 χρονών από τη Ρωσία), Mikhail Andreev (34 χρονών από τη Ρωσία), Denis Avdeev (40 χρονών από τη Ρωσία), Dmitry Novikov (??χρονών από τη Ρωσία), Sergey Ovsyannikov (30 years old from Kazakhstan), Aleksandr Isaev (31 years old from Russia), and Yevgeniy Timchenko (30 years old from Kazakhstan).
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