Home » Security Bloggers Network » Malware spotlight: What is click fraud?

Malware spotlight: What is click fraud?

Introduction

Click fraud is a well-known method for fraudsters to make money by taking advantage of online affiliates. It typically involves an ad placed on a website where either a bot or (less commonly) a real person clicks on this ad to generate an artificially high amount of monetized user interaction. What many may not notice is that attackers have been using malware to perform both click fraud and other malicious actions, making it a type of malware all its own. 

This article will detail the click fraud type of malware and examine what click fraud is, how it works, some of the other capabilities of click fraud malware and real-world examples of click fraud malware.

What is click fraud?

Did you know that according to advertising experts, one in five paid clicks in the month of January 2017 was fraudulent? This means that either malware, a dedicated application or an unfortunate person was responsible for this click. 

Also known as pay-per-click (PPC) or performance-based advertising, click fraud is the practice of imitating the actions of legitimate web users clicking on a web-based advertisement. Part of the point (from the attacker’s perspective) is to generate clicks for advertisements regardless if there is genuine interest or not. 

Some click fraud is used by ad agencies to inflate click numbers, but a generous amount of the click fraud activity online is performed by malware. These clicks translate into dollar signs for the attackers, who may be hired by an ad agency — but regardless of origin, the end result is often the spreading of even more dangerous malware

There are many ways that click fraud malware can infect a system. Some of the most common methods are:

• As an attachment to spam emails
• Infected apps
• Downloaded by other malware
• (Read more...)