Xindi Botnet Reportedly Steals Millions From Ad Exchanges
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 11/23/2015 09:54 AM
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Xindi is a new botnet that is stealing millions from its targets... advertising exchange networks.
According to the research group Pixakate, the botnet uses social engineering techniques to place malware on large enterprise and universities to turn them into botnets.
These botnets trick the host machine into reporting thousands of fake ad impressions without the users knowledge.
The malware has generated 78 billion illegitimate impressions so far, Pixalate estimated.
"[Xindi] is the first botnet that exclusively focuses on generating fake ‘viewable’ impressions at scale,” the firm said.
A flaw exploits vulnerability in the advertising protocol implementation which delays the reports of the fake ad impression until hours after they supposedly took place. This allows the report to be undetected.
The name “Xindi” comes from a race of aliens from Star Trek: Enterprise, the last Trek series on television.
Source: VentureBeat
According to the research group Pixakate, the botnet uses social engineering techniques to place malware on large enterprise and universities to turn them into botnets. These botnets trick the host machine into reporting thousands of fake ad impressions without the users knowledge.
The malware has generated 78 billion illegitimate impressions so far, Pixalate estimated.
"[Xindi] is the first botnet that exclusively focuses on generating fake ‘viewable’ impressions at scale,” the firm said.
A flaw exploits vulnerability in the advertising protocol implementation which delays the reports of the fake ad impression until hours after they supposedly took place. This allows the report to be undetected.
The name “Xindi” comes from a race of aliens from Star Trek: Enterprise, the last Trek series on television.
Source: VentureBeat
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