Multi-Million Dollar Click-Fraud Ring "DormRing1" Exposed
In the recent economic downturn we have witnessed an increase in cybercriminal activity and, on the flip-side, an up-rise in investigative forces to flush out these crooks. To support that very theory, a large group called DormRing1, the largest click-fraud ring discovered so far, was recently crippled when Anchor Intelligence, which keeps track of online traffic quality and suspicious click activity, shut down the revenue outlets to tens of thousands of false publishers.
Click-fraud is an occurrence of an automated script or person imitating a computer user by clicking on an ad for the purpose of generating multiple clicks ultimately producing money for the clicks. Click-fraud has been a means for cybercrooks to get a quick pay-day by sending fake clicks generated by infected IP addresses. To always be ahead of the game, cybercrooks are using new advanced botnets to carry out their click-fraud schemes.
Anchor Intelligence, a company dedicated to providing quality assessments on ad networks, advertisers and other related agencies, initiated an investigation that lead to the crackdown of DormRing1. DormRing1 was an established and large click-fraud ring mainly composed of Shanghai students.
An Anchor Intelligence investigator who spoke Mandarin Chinese went undercover on several Chinese social media sites and bulletin boards which many of DormRing1's members participated in. The investigator was able to gain the trust of many members and gather information about the basics of their operation. With the information obtained during the investigation, Anchor Intelligence was able to pull links from different dishonest publishers. After knowing that they had the right targets, they were able to have the networks pull the ads and eliminate publishers off of exchanges and blacklist the associated URLs, IP addresses, and emails.
After the shutdown of the ring's networks, they have remained abandoned and unused. Furthermore, Anchor Intelligence joined forces with the FBI's San Francisco branch and the National Cyber Forensics & Training Alliance (NCFTA) to make positive strides in the battle of spreading cyber crime.
If other credible "anti-cybercriminal organizations", or agencies against cybercrime, can all come together and share information and ideas, then we can ultimate see a decline in cybercriminal activity? Other rings similar to that of DormRing1 are still flourishing in different regions of the world especially newly created ones in India and Southeast Asia. Researchers and agencies believe DormRing1 was an exceptionally large ring and many rings are only compromised of a dozen to thousands of fake publishers.
Through similar efforts that were spearheaded by Anchor Intelligence can we actually crack down on the amount of cybercriminal activity that we witness almost every day?