back to article Russian admits being Ebury botnet herder, now jailed for 46 months

A Russian man has been imprisoned for 46 months after admitting to using the Ebury malware to create a massive botnet for fun and profit. Maxim Senakh, 41, of Veliky Novgorod in Russia, was sentenced in Minnesota after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was …

  1. nuked
    Coat

    Should have used windows

    1. serendipity

      No the guy obviously believes in using free open source software! ;))

  2. phuzz Silver badge

    Minnesota eh?

    I now assume everyone there talks like they were in Fargo.

  3. DropBear

    Glad to hear that now that the Fearless Men and Women from the FBI's Computer Crimes Division cleaned up both the free and the... rest of the world from terrifying Cyber Criminals I can safely uninstall my antivirus, firewall and all that. We're finally safe! I mean they would never pick up a drop from the ocean and parade it proudly around with much fanfare claiming to have solved drought worldwide...!

  4. swm

    Click Fraud

    I still don't see how click fraud makes money for anyone but google. I can't seem to"follow the money".

    1. Hugh McIntyre

      Re: Click Fraud

      Re: "I still don't see how click fraud makes money for anyone but google"

      If you run a website containing ads from someone like Google, then Google gets money from the advertiser any time the advert is shown or clicked on. And you (the website owner with adverts) get a percentage of the money from Google in order to run your website.

      So click fraud involves generating fake page views of your website or clicks on adverts contained therein so you (website owner) get the percentage from Google even though no real person viewed the advert. Generally on fake websites because the website benefits from the fraud, not the advertiser.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Click Fraud

        Generally on fake websites because the website benefits from the fraud, not the advertiser

        Which shows the fundamental flaw in pay per view and pay per click advertising. This type of fraud will continue until the gullible morons who place adverts stop placing ads on that basis.

        1. Hugh McIntyre

          Re: Click Fraud

          RE: "Which shows the fundamental flaw in pay per view and pay per click advertising. This type of fraud will continue until the gullible morons who place adverts stop placing ads on that basis."

          Not disagreeing there's 'a problem, but unless advertisers buy ads on the basis of "please place adverts on theregister.co.uk, newegg.com, <other specific sites>" then they want some way to charge more when more copies of the advert are displayed. Pay-per-play schemes on Spotify or Youtube have the same risk.

          Periodically advertisers have complained to Google about click fraud and demanded that "Something Should Be Done". So there is some effort to crack down, although right now this seems to be just treated as a containable cost of doing business. In particular the fact that the fraud uses a botnet is because it would be a bit obvious if all the fake requests came from the same IP address.

  5. Hammond

    Some companies use click fraud to put competitors out of business. An example is the recent lawsuit about Wickfire's click fraud they used to put most of their competitors out of business. A jury found them guilty but didn't award damages apparently because Google allowed the activity. It will be interesting to see how the appeals turn out. They were sued for $22 million.

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