The Department of Justice and FBI released
results yesterday of their ongoing cyber crime initiative to disrupt
and dismantle “botherders” and "botnets" and have identified over 1 million new victim computer IP addresses.
OPERATION
BOT ROAST is a national initiative and the FBI is working with industry partners, including
the CERT Coordination Center
at Carnegie Mellon University, to notify the victim owners
of the computers.
The FBI defines a botnet as "a collection of compromised computers under
the remote command and control of a criminal “botherder.” Most
owners of the compromised computers are unknowing and unwitting
victims. They have unintentionally allowed unauthorized
access and use of their computers as a vehicle to facilitate
other crimes, such as identity theft, denial of service
attacks, phishing, click fraud, and the mass distribution
of spam and spyware. Because of their widely distributed
capabilities, botnets are a growing threat to national
security, the national information infrastructure, and
the economy."
Click Forensics™ closely monitors bots and botnets engaged in click fraud activity against online advertisers - as this activity is not always detected by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Our scientists and analysts monitor and identify suspicious ad click patterns each week which involve bots, botnets, and click farm related IP addresses.
Bots and botnets are not new to online fraud or to click fraud activity - but they do evolve and attempt to avoid detection in order to maliciously click on advertiser ads and profit using the content networks.
Kevin Embree
SVP, Product Strategy
Click Forensics