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Subject: [ISN] Botnet click fraud at record high
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews ! org>
Date: 2009-10-23 7:14:42
Message-ID: Pine.LNX.4.61.0910230214330.2613 () conundrum ! infosecnews ! org
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/23/botnet_generated_click_fraud/
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
The Register
23rd October 2009
Malware-infected computers are increasingly being used to perpetrate
click fraud, according to a study released Thursday that found their
contribution was the highest since researchers began compiling
statistics on the crime.
In the third quarter of this year, 42.6 percent of fraudulent clicks
were generated by computers that were part of botnets, compared with
36.9 percent the previous quarter and about 27.6 percent in the same
period of 2008. The increase comes as criminals trying to profit from
click fraud take advantage of new advances in malware that make the
practice harder to detect.
"As the botnets get more sophisticated, they're able to perpetrate more
click fraud," said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics, the advertising
auditing firm that prepared the report. "They're finding new ways of
being distributed, and that's reflected in the data."
The jump in botnet use over the past year comes as the overall amount of
click fraud dropped, from 16 percent of all paid ads in Q3 of 2008 to
14.1 percent last quarter. That means manual forms of click fraud, in
which large numbers of individuals engage in the practice, has decreased
by an even larger margin. Many of those people get paid to knowingly gin
the advertising results, while others are tricked into it.
[...]
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