https://www.cyberscoop.com/scammers-masquerading-smart-tv-owners-fleece-advertisers-researchers-say/
By Jeff Stone
CYBERSCOOP
April 16, 2020
Scammers who have infiltrated the advertising ecosystem are using data
centers to impersonate a range of connected devices in order to defraud
marketers, according to new findings.
New York-based security firm White Ops on Thursday disclosed a vast,
ongoing scheme in which fraudsters are charging advertising companies for
ad space on smart TVs, and then not delivering on their promise. To boost
their credibility, the scammers are disguising bot activity which
originates in global data centers as legitimate traffic in order to dupe
anti-fraud services.
The campaign, which White Ops has named Ice Bucket, is an updated version
of the notorious Methbot/3ve scheme, in which scammers sold commercial
advertising space in videos and websites that were never viewed by real
humans. Methbot scammers earned roughly $29 million between 2014 and 2018,
according to the Department of Justice, and also used data center traffic
to seem legitimate. While White Ops declined to speculate on how much
money the scammers may have earned, citing an ongoing investigation, the
effort at one point accounted for an estimated 1.9 billion ad requests the
company monitored in January.
Some 28% of traffic that appeared to be from connected TVs that month was
fraudulent, the company said.
[...]
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