Botnet implicated in sophisticated click fraud operation

An extraordinarily sophisticated operation has been found riding on top of the Bahama Botnet. Previously implicated in ads involving rogue antivirus software, researchers studying the botnet have discovered malware designed to perpetuate click fraud on the computers infected by it.

The system works this way: Hapless users attempting to perform a search on bona fide search engines--such as Yahoo, Bingle or Google--are redirected to a rogue server instead. A bogus page is served that looks exactly like the real site. The fake server then covertly modifies the search data--pulled from real search engines--so that a smaller ad network gets paid when the users click on them.

This clearly is a serious problem, though it's probably very lucrative to the perpetrators. A Google spokeswoman told The Register: "We are investigating and monitoring this issue just as we investigate and monitor many other botnets and schemes every day."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at The Register

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