Clickbot.A Infected Zombie Computers Network Shut

If you remember, there were earlier reports of compromised PCs infected by Clickbot.A being used to automatically click on pay per click ads especially Google Adsense for generating revenue

Panda Software describes the Clickbot.A activities

“Clickbot.A is a Trojan that obtains financial profit from fraudulent clicks on advertisements sponsored by a certain company, which in return does not get any visits to its website.

In order to do so, Clickbot.A registers itself as BHO (Browser Helper Object), so that it activates whenever Internet Explorer is run. Clickbot.A provides several characteristics in order to update itself, notify its controller that it has affected the computer, start the fraudulent clicks on demand, etc.”

And now a Panda Software press release says that a joint effort between RSA Security, (experts in protecting online identities and digital assets) and Panda Software helped to dismantle the control system of a network used for swindling “pay per click” systems.

“The bot network -comprised of more than 50,000 zombie machines infected by Clickbot.A – was programmed to access these Internet addresses and to register clicks on the syndicated advertisements.

The fraudsters received a slice of the ‘pay per click’ advertising revenues even though the original advertisers did not receive any visits to their sites. The entire bot network was managed by a complex control center. Each bot could be monitored remotely.

Did you check your Adsense statistcs over the month, were your click rates affected?