Methbot
Methbot was an advertising fraud scheme.
History
Methbot was first tracked in 2015 by cybersecurity firm White Ops, and the botnet saw rapidly increased activity in 2016.[1] The botnet originated in Russia (though it was not state sponsored),[2] and utilized foreign computers and networks in Europe and North America.[3] The infrastructure consisted of 571,904 dedicated IPs,[4] 6,000 domains, and 250,267 distinct URLs, each of which could only house a video ad, and used variants of the names of famous publishers to fool those looking into the domains. This led the operators to game the system, leading ad selection algorithms to select these fake web pages over larger corporate pages from legitimate companies, and charge advertisers at a premium. About 570,000 bots were used to execute clicks on those websites, “watching” up to 300 million video ads a day[1] while the bots mimicked normal computer user behavior.[5] Estimated clicks per day generally reached between 200 and 300 million per day.[6] The botnet relied on data servers instead of more traditional botnets that rely on infected PCs and mobile devices.[4]
At its peak, Methbot was making its operators—which were dubbed the Ad Fraud Komanda—up to between three and five million dollars per day[1] for between $180 million[7] and $1 billion dollar in losses to the ad industry,[8] while some other estimates were nearer to half a million per day.[9] At the time, it was the largest and most profitable ad fraud network established, before it was discovered in late 2016.[10]
References
- ^ a b c Fox-Brewster, Thomas. "'Biggest Ad Fraud Ever': Hackers Make $5M A Day By Faking 300M Video Views". Forbes.
- ^ Javers, Eamon (20 December 2016). "Cyber firm says Russian 'Methbot' scam is defrauding digital advertisers". CNBC.
- ^ "The Russian Methbot Scam Is Just the Tip of the Ad Fraud Iceberg". Fortune.
- ^ a b "Russian Methbot Operation Makes up to $5 Million per Day from Click-Fraud". BleepingComputer.
- ^ Zara, Christopher (20 December 2016). "What is Methbot? Russian hacking operation said to be scamming digital ad industry with fake video views". Fast Company.
- ^ Ciampa, Mark (20 October 2017). CompTIA Security+ Guide to Network Security Fundamentals. Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781337288781 – via Google Books.
- ^ Pagliery, Jose (20 December 2016). "Russian 'methbot' fraud steals $180 million in online ads". CNNMoney.
- ^ Greene, Tim (20 December 2016). "Fraud detection firm outs $1b Russian ad-fraud gang and its robo-browsing Methbot". Network World.
- ^ "Was Methbot's Financial Impact Grossly Exaggerated?". adage.com. 23 February 2017.
- ^ "Methbot: The beginning of the end for digital ad fraud". MarTech Today. 17 January 2017.