Scammers are masquerading as smart TV owners to fleece advertisers, researchers say

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

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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