Service Drains Competitors’ Online Ad Budget
Summary: A service nicknamed "GoodGoogle" operating on Russian-language crime forums sells AdWords click fraud that drains competitors' advertising budgets, with prices ranging from $100 to block three to ten ad units for 24 hours to a flat $1,000 to sideline a handful of competitors' ads indefinitely, paid up-front in virtual currencies like WebMoney. Researcher Nicholas Weaver of ICSI and UC Berkeley speculated the service combines a private botnet of hacked computers with software that makes the clicking appear organic from search results, and that the bots are kept to this single purpose to avoid landing on abuse lists used by Google and other large Internet companies.
Key Takeaway: For $1,000, a small business can have a competitor's ads sidelined indefinitely, and the seller has been offering the service since at least January 2012 while advertising on YouTube and listing Gmail accounts as contacts.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Fraud & Scams
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