IE Used To Launch Yahoo IM Clickfraud

An anonymous reader writes, "There's a new Instant Messaging worm in the wild that is taking the idea of Botnet clickfraud up a level. It trades in automated drones (prone to malfunction and detection) for real live people who (of course) have the option of not actually clicking anything, thus theoretically making their clicks harder to identify as 'fraudulent.' This IM attack doesn't even need a victim to physically run anything to become infected — simply visiting a certain site in Internet Explorer will cause the files to download and start sending infection messages. At this point, their homepage is changed to a site using Mesothelioma (a rare form of cancer) to ring up high-paying results on the perpetrators' Google ads. As the researcher who discovered the infection notes, 'It's way, way harder to trace some random boob who has a ton of (partially) unconnected people shunting IM links all over the place. Try staying anonymous as a Botnet owner who just had the entire details of his server splattered across the net by Shadowserver. What will be interesting to see is if some of the smaller Botnet guys ditch their technical woes and jump on the much-easier-to-maintain IM bandwagon to get their clickfraud kicks.'"

What?

Can someone translate the summary into English?

Re:What?

I gave up at the point where my homepage gets changed to a kind of cancer.

Re:What?

You got further than I did. I'm hung up at the second sentence.

It trades in automated drones (prone to malfunction and detection) for real live people who (of course) have the option of not actually clicking anything, thus theoretically making their clicks harder to identify as 'fraudulent.'

Of course when you write (of course) with constant parenthetical statements (prone to misunderstandings and pointless complication) in the sentence, then use single-quotes for (apparently) 'no' reason, how could you (not you specifically, but 'you' in the general case) possibly understand it?

Re:What?

I'm glad I wasn't the only one to have that reaction to the atrocious writing. I actually did a mental double check that it wasn't April 1. Clearly, this post was submitted by an automated drone and then machine translated through several different languages to mask its true origin. Fortunately, I am onto the evil botmaster and have no intention to RTFA or click anything.

Huh?

At this point, their homepage is changed to a site using Mesothelioma (a rare form of cancer) to ring up high-paying results on the perpetrators' Google ads.

Wow. I had no idea there was a rare form of cancer that could change your homepage. It must be very rare indeed!

Seriously though, what the hell does that sentence mean?

Re:Huh?

At this point, their homepage is changed to a site using^H^H^H^H^H about Mesothelioma (a rare form of cancer) to ring up high-paying results on the perpetrators' Google ads. High-paying, because mesothelioma is an uncommon word.

Re:Huh?

No, "mesothelioma" is high-paying because it's only caused by exposure to asbestos. Therefore, plaintiff's lawyers have determined that anybody searching for it probably has the disease and therefore the ability to win a case against the asbestos manufacturers. The lawyer will, of course, get a nice cut of that (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars). So the searchers and their clicks are very valuable to plaintiff's lawyers. One estimate I heard was that AdSense links for mesothelioma were going for about $50, if you wanted a decent position.

If you want to screw over some lawyers and Google, search for mesothelioma and click on the AdSense links.

Re:Huh?

Google does offer a public tool for estimating cost-per-click and position based on keyword, match type, and maximum bid. Toying with it...

For 'mesothelioma', Exact Match, the current estimate seems to be that a max bid of $100/click will normally land one in position 1-3 and cost $44.23/click -- which is very, very good. It's not the highest I've seen (and there are ones that have both significantly higher CPC and probably a much higher clickthrough rate given greater applicability, judging from some experimentation... but I'm not here to help the click-spammers increase their take), but it's up there.

at least the Mesothelioma example targets lawyers

As history illustrates the litigation around this type of cancer can net high returns for lawyers and those seeking damages- however these cases are rare. Thus the cost-per-click (CPC) can range quite a bit on bidding networks seeking these large litigation rewards. The bids may range from $4.00 to $13.00 per click and higher. This makes it a prime target for malware authors and worm writers who setup systems to either force or set-up a system to maximize clicks to these high paying keywords in order to gain their fee split.

Maybe they'll be inspired to stop chasing ambulences -- or, in this case, sufferers of "a rare form of cancer (about 1 in 1,000,000)" -- and start chasing botnet operators.

without RTFA...

Without RTFA, and thus most likely wrong, but someone feeling right, I think that what's up is that it pops open an IE with links that are just begging to be clicked, and when you do, they get their money. Of course, the user may not actually click anything, but if they're like the lusers I've seen too much of, they'll go "huh, what's that" and cha-ching...

Mesothelioma ads = gold mine for hucksters

For those who didn't RTFA, here's another summary:

You get an infected Yahoo IM. In addition to propogating, it turns your IE home page into an ad-filled page. The ad page works like Google's adsense, only in this case instead of Google paying a legitimate web site when people click-through the ad, Google or some other company winds up paying the scammer or his cronies.

Because of the way it works it's a lot harder to detect than automated fraud or paid-human click fraud. Because the end user will likely click on the ad only if he's actually interested in it, the company that originated the ad might not even consider it fraud - he's just found a live potential client.

What makes it fraud is that the end user's web page has been hijacked. In other words - it's spyware/adware.

Workaround: Don't use IE, and use a malware-detector that detects and blocks Yahoo IM Malware.

what the...?

At this point, their homepage is changed to a site using Mesothelioma (a rare form of cancer) to ring up high-paying results on the perpetrators' Google ads.

WTF? This worm gives your computer cancer?

Just another example ...

Just another example of clever people taking advantage of anyone that is unfortunate enough to not know to click on unwanted popup things that ask them to click here, or enter your financial information etc.

The internet will not be safe, ever, because of those people. Yes, "click here to win a date with name-a-rising-star" will always find its way to someone that thinks there is some remote possibility that Bill Gates will pay you to forward emails, or that a music hall-of-famer needs a date from someone just like them. The human factor in security will always be the weakest link. ALWAYS.

Whew!

Good thing I'm using ICQ.

Sorry to ask the obvious....

...but surely google would quickly become aware of the website and cancel the google ad accounts of the sites linked from the page? Thus the scammers would get no "Step 3.... profit!!!"?

Easy to stop...

I didn't RTFA, but presumably the ads being displayed are associated with a certain Google publisher account (or a handful of them). It should be pretty easy for Google to mark all clicks from those accounts as fraud, not charge the advertisers, and not pay the publishers.

Doesn't sound right

The article is written so badly that's it's very hard to figure out the meaning. But this bit seems to describe the "entry point" to the infection:

Here, we have something different - an Instant Messaging attack launched by a webpage forcibly dumping executable files into a PCs temporary files directory, via some nifty VisualBasic scripting.

and further on:

So, how does this happen?
First of all, you need to hit an infection site using Internet Explorer - this exploit doesn't work in Firefox, for example. Due to the way these files are downloaded onto the PC, you can effectively make any site a potential threat and can scatter these files around wherever you like.

This sounds like a straight up "go to a web page and an arbitrary executable runs" attack. That would be a HUGE security hole in IE that has nothing to do with the rest of this issue. Not that it's never happened before, but I somehow doubt that this would be the first place we'd hear about it.

They play with fire

Those click-frauders can be traced back and personally identified because they have to run "websites" to generate revenue from those clicks. So their personal "income" address (to send paychecks) is in the Google Adsense (available), once identified they can be brought to justice by Google (if only Google ever really wanted to combat them). More scary scenario is that they can virtually destroy any small-midsized website business if they target it with these botnets. Google may cut them from Adsense and red flag them (innocent website owners may not even know about being targeted). And bye bye website. The core of the problem is that Google is irresponsibly allowing those fake and obvious fraud made-for-adsense websites to flourish.

Reference

I refer the honourable gentlemen to the satement i made some moments ago:

If the US Government can prevent banks (credit cards) from handling the proceeds of internet gambing, how comes they can't do the same for handling the proceeds of goods advertised by Spam (etc)?

Is there a US Government at all? Is the US Government controlled by a moral cesspit like Al Quaida say it is? Has Gw Bush sold his soul to the devil? Is the internet controlled by Aliens from the planet Zog? Stay tuned for more news - same channel same time next week!

Funniest part of the article

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer commonly caused by prolonged exposure to asbestos and litigation

Exposure to litigation - it can get you more than loads of cash. It can kill.

Sorry.

I have to type this message from my laptop, because my hard disk needs chemo...

Who's missing?

So Microsoft is being used to make use of Yahoo! in trying to throw click fraud at Google.

Are we missing anyone?

YIM uses IE functionality

Several years ago I disabled cookies in IE and found it broke YIM. I decided this made YIM a security risk and quickly switched to Trillian for all my IM need. I have NEVER regretted making this change.

Un-believable...

To the person that modded this "flamebait", you do realize I was just playing on the sentance structure, right?

Oh well, I've had smart-assed comments modded "insightful" before as well....that's karma ;)

Re:I think you are being too hard on IE

Instead of "used" as in "utilized"...I intentionally mis-interpreted it as "used to" as in did so in the past.

It was intended to be a subtle play on words, but it seems to have not had the desired effect. Perhaps I should have ended with something like this:

{voice from crowd} ... he meant, "utilized to!"

{me} ...oh.....nevermind....

Re:a question on "click fraud"...

A is paying B with the expectation that people genuinely interested in A's ad will click that ad. If C simulates clicks without even looking at the ad, A isn't getting his money's worth when he pays for his ads. Where the line between "users clicking ads without a genuine interest" and "programmatic click fraud" is drawn is still subjective, though.

Re:Does this effcet us

Does anyone that comes here on purpose us IE still or waste time with yahoo messanger?

Unfortunately, yes. I have to have both IE and Firefox for testing webpages, and YM as my main IM. And unfortunately, one of my friends is bombing me with this said worm.

Out of curiousity, I booted into ubuntu, logged into YM and tried it out, knowing I'm safe. :) It was just a simple VBScript but I couldn't get the file in question.

Re:Does this effcet us

Does anyone that comes here on purpose us IE still

At work some of us are stuck with the corporate desktop environment which means IE. The IT department has done a pretty good job keeping it locked down. When they run the corporate proxy server, it's easier to get a handle on what doesn't make it in. They also use managed switches, so if a machine starts spewing, it gets disconnected. It tends to stop worms that try to scan for vuneribilities or other bot activities. Even the new version of Skype that used supernotes triggered the defences and dropped a bunch of machines while they tried to figure out the cause of the unusual data pattern.

Home users have no monitor that triggers and disconnects on unusual data patterns on the net.

Re:a question on "click fraud"...

Let's say that party A puts some banners on party B's web page, with the agreement that A will pay B some money for users who click on the ad.


If party B is the worm writer to get party C to click on the ad, then party C is not a real consumer interested in A's product at all. This fraud lines party B's pocket. A never intended to pay for clicks except by those who searched for the keyword because they were researching it for personal reasons.