14 DAY TRIAL // Cybercrooks offer click-fraud services that can render inefficient competitor’s attempts to advertise their business.
One of them is called GoodGoogle and its purpose is to consume the competition’s budget for Google AdWords advertising by inflating the costs.
This sort of service is advertised on underground, Russian-speaking forums, and it is not new in the criminal world.
The particularities of how it works are not clear, but Brian Krebs, who contacted the providers of the GoodGoogle service, says that for $100 / €75 one could block between three to ten ads for a period of 24 hours.
It appears that for ten times this price the service can disrupt the advertising attempts of a competitor for an indefinite period of time. Moreover, the security blogger was directed to locations where customers showed how content they were with GoodGoogle.
Brian Krebs says that the money is delivered in virtual currency to the provider of the service, who also offers support and a warranty for the first three weeks.
Despite the lack of clear details on how the criminal ad-breaking machine works, there are some theories.
Nicholas Weaver, researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and at the University California, Berkeley, told Krebs that the business most likely involves harnessing a botnet to carry out the ad-clicking and a specially-crafted software to control when the clicking is done, so that the actions appear to be legitimate.