Google Terminates Bots with Improved Ad System Protections

  • Wednesday, February 10th, 2016
  • Author: Tim Maytom
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Google has introduced a new series of protections into its ad systems which have filtered out traffic from three of the top botnets currently causing widespread ad fraud across the digital landscape, effectively killing off all three.

While Google already had protections against fraudulent traffic in place, the new changes are “resilient to possible changes to the malware that generates this botnet traffic”, evolving with the source of the problem to ensure that fraudulent clicks are filtered out. Googles solution has been put into place on both its DoubleClick Bid Manager and the Google Display Network, protecting both traditional and programmatically-sold adverts.

“This move boosts our defences against invalid traffic generated by some nasty ad fraud malware, including Bedep and two other malware families that we have code-named Beetal and Changthangi,” said Andres Ferrate, chief advocate for Google ad traffic quality at Google. “Together, these three botnets are comprised of over 500,000 infected user machines.”

Botnets are made up of huge networks of malware-infected computers, controlled by fraudsters who use the devices to generate large amounts of non-human ad traffic, usually in partnership with unscrupulous publishers.

Ad fraud impacts the budget of advertisers, the reputation of publishers and the safety of consumers, and given the scale of the networks involved and the skill of malware designers, it can be difficult to root out.

“We believe in fighting the good fight in order to stop malicious actors in the advertising ecosystem,” said Ferrate. “We also know that our success is not based solely on sophisticated algorithms or robust, highly-scalable infrastructure. Our success also relies on a team of warrior scientists that combine art and science to innovate and cultivate, relying on creativity and collective wisdom to effect change in unique ways. We will continue to be vigilant, working hard to protect our systems from fraudsters in 2016 and beyond.”