Ginny Marvin says, “Digital advertising fraud security firm White Ops released a report Tuesday detailing the exploits of “Methbot,” a new variation on the botnet. The firm says Russian cybercriminals have used Methbot to siphon off $3 to $5 million in video ad revenue from premium publishers every day.

The operation targeted high-value video advertising inventory, including inventory sold through private marketplaces, by spoofing more than 6,000 premium publisher domains and creating fake pages on which it could run real ads from real advertisers. White Ops is releasing a list of 250,267 URLs that were generated by Methbot across 6,111 publisher domains. Some example fake pages from the report:

  • http://ibtimes.co.uk/video
  • http://vogue.com/video
  • http://economist.com/video
  • http://espn.com/video”.

White Ops reports biggest ad fraud botnet found yet: ‘Methbot’ targeting high-CPM video inventory

Marketing Land

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