3ve Offline: Countless Windows PCs using 1.7m IP addresses hacked to 'view' up to 12 billion adverts a day A collection of cybersecurity companies, Google, and the Feds are sharing details on how they uncovered and dismantled a massive ad-fraud operation known as "3ve" (pronounced "Eve".) Google says that at its peak, the 3ve scam employed as many as 1.7 million hijacked devices to generate fake clicks on adverts, and made its …
l33t sp33k lost its "popularity" in the mid-2000's I think...
still useful for passwords, though
I google'd for 'leet speak generators" and got a bunch of hits. Seems a lot of people like to keep 'l33t sp33k' alive.
Oh, and good article. I think it's informative enough to generally know what to look out for with respect to computer security.
Now I know why the people buying internet advertising have this fond (rather charming) little delusion: that their deluge of crap actually works.
There is a certain poetry in the idea that a billion shittily-produced, cheap, nasty adverts, so bad that they might as well be generated by Artificial Idiots, are being "viewed" by a billion bots programmed by shitty, nasty, Artificial Humans.
I guess it's all of a piece with the zenith of human technological and civilised progress: half the species concentrating on lying to the other half so they'll buy crap they don't need with money they don't have.
Well done, us.
"for comparison, this is more than the number of broadband subscriptions in Ireland"
I'm sorry but i cant get my head around this number unless its presented in a more commonly understood metric. please express the number in multiples of average Sheep per sqr mile in Wales, or the distances that can be reached when stacking double decker buses on top of each other.
QUOTE
"3ve’s sheer size and complexity posed a significant risk not just to individual advertisers and publishers, but to the entire advertising ecosystem," Google said.
END-QUOTE
Is it just me who would rejoice if the whole advertising ecosystem went down? Or are there more who think it wouldn't be a bad idea.
NB: I don't have any problems with relevant ads, but I do have a problem with the staggeringly small minority of ads that are in even the slightest way relevant instead of for things I just bought and won't need a replacement for within the next ten years.
Not really - please note that it was _its_ decision not to install on systems _with_ security software that _it_ was obviously already running on. Unless you referred to the uselessness of security software that most people are already well aware of, so it's not particularly worrying news either.
Like (I suspect) most here, I block ads (uBlock Origin), and haven't seen one for years. I feel a little guilty about doing this on El Reg and some other sites.
If somebody wrote a modified blocker where one could say : "On theregister.co.uk and the following sites, download ads in the background and follow them, but send everything you get straight to /dev/null", I'd use it to support El Reg and similar sites. I see three issues: technical, ethical, and legal.
Can't really see why there should be a technical problem with this, though the ad-following would have to be a little selective/limited to evade malware. (Also, I dunno if El Reg gets paid if the ad is sent to my machine, or if a link has to be followed before they get anything?)
I suppose the advertisers might suddenly develop a sense of ethics and squawk at this idea. But "ethics" and "advertisers" only appear in the same sentence to be mocked.
Would there be a _legal_ issue in deliberately installing such software on your own machine for your own purposes? I'd think not, but am not a lawyer.
From the title: . ..countless Windows PCs
and then...
The malware would only install on systems that weren't running security software
Since current OS market share shows majority of Windows is now Win7 and Win10, and both have Windows Defender ON BY DEFAULT and cannot be turned off, CAN I mark this news as fake news from Google? Really. I am serious. Something doesn't add up. Since disabling Windows Defender is not that easy for regular users.
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