Cyber criminals manipulate online advertising

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/20/methbot-biggest-ad-fraud-busted
>'Biggest Ad Fraud Ever': Hackers Make $5M A Day By Faking 300M Video Views

http://mashable.com/2016/12/20/ad-fraud-methbot-russian-cybercrime/
>Inside 'Methbot': The massive Russian cybercrime operation stealing millions from advertisers

http://adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-scheme-cost-advertisers-3-million-day/307235/


>Collectively dubbed "Methbot" by WhiteOps, the bots scammed publications like the Huffington Post, The Economist, Fortune, ESPN, Vogue, CBS Sports and Fox News, the company said. Overall, about 6,000 publishers were hit, according to the report. Social media websites weren't immune to the attack, either, as platforms like Facebook were also hit, it said.

>A complex ad fraud scheme has been siphoning $3 million to $5 million per day since October from the largest U.S. brands and media companies, making it the most profitable and advanced operation seen by the industry to date, according to a new report from WhiteOps, an anti-ad fraud security firm.

>A group of Russian hackers were behind the attack, creating more than half a million fake users and 250,000 fake websites to pull off the scheme, according to WhiteOps. Bots, which are used to mimic human behavior to dupe advertisers in paying for impressions never seen by humans, were used to view some 300 million video ads a day, according to the report.

>The Methbot operation targeted the most expensive advertising on the internet: full-sized video ads served in full view on name-brand sites to users who were logged in to social media and showed signs of engagement like mouse movement, WhiteOps said. The operation was able to avoid notice for weeks by mimicking many of the telltale signals of human interaction monitored by advertisers and anti-fraud firms.