elgato
Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 17240
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:50 am Post subject: Fraudulent Online Ad Scheme Affected More Than 4 MLN PC's |
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According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, at least 4 million computers in over 100 different countries fell victim to a giant fraud scheme that involved a sophisticated virus that manipulated search results and used online ads to generate fraudulent revenue for the virus’ creators.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called it a “massive and sophisticated scheme.”
The fraud was perpetrated by seven individuals, all of whom the U.S. is trying to get extradited. Six of the seven are Estonian nationals and have been taken into custody. The seventh is a Russian national and he remains at large.
Here’s how the scheme worked:
Malware installed to millions of computers allowed the perpetrators to manipulate online searches in order to redirect clicks to certain sites and ads. They used these falsely-acquired clicks to generate ad revenue.
Some examples of this included links to Apple’s iTunes, Netflix, and even the IRS being redirected to unrelated sites.
The malware also interfered with the computers’ anti-virus software, making the intrusion even harder to identify.
http://www.webpronews.com/fbi-massive-fraudulent-online-ad-scheme-affected-more-than-4-million-computers-2011-11 |
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