Subscribe RSS
Comment RSSClickjacker Extradited
Written by Pace LattinApril 22, 2012 # 7:16 pm # Industry News, Legal Challenges, Specials # 6 Comments
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today the extradition of ANTON IVANOV from Estonia to face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and computer intrusion, among other offenses. The charges relate to the alleged operation of a massive and sophisticated Internet fraud scheme that infected with malware more than four million computers located in over 100 countries. The malware secretly altered the settings on infected computers enabling IVANOV and the six other charged defendants – Vladimir Tsastsin, Timur Gerassimenko, Dmitri Jegorov, Valeri Aleksejev, Konstantin Poltev, and Andrey Taame – to digitally hijack Internet searches and re-route computers to certain websites and advertisements. The defendants subsequently received millions of dollars in fees as a result of unintended visits to these websites and ads by users of infected computers. The malware also prevented the installation of anti-virus software and operating system updates on infected computers, leaving those computers and their users unable to detect or stop the defendants’ malware, and exposing them to attacks by other viruses.
IVANOV, an Estonian citizen, was arrested in Estonia on November 8, 2011, when the Indictment against him was unsealed. He arrived in the Southern District of New York this afternoon, and was presented and arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman.
This case is being handled by the Office’s Complex Frauds Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sarah Lai, James Pastore, and Alexander Wilson are in charge of the prosecution.
Written by Pace Lattin
Pace Lattin is one of the top experts in interactive advertising, affiliate marketing. Pace Lattin is known for his dedication to ethics in marketing, and focus on compliance and fraud in the industry, and has written numerous articles for publications from MediaPost, ClickZ, ADOTAS and his own blogs.
There are six comments. Join the discussion.
Share/Bookmark this!
This is the same thing that all pay per install software does. You are promoting networks right now that serve the same kinds of adware branded as games and ‘download’ offers. All of the incentive networks have this kind of stuff. Smilely toolbar is not looking for upsells, they want to serve ads.
The title is misleading too. Clickjacking more commonly describes invisible iframes or something similar to circumvent XSS protections. This was simply a malware/adware campaign. It would be interesting to know what the install vectors were. Was it because he was exploiting machines that he got busted or was he bundling his software with torrents of videogames?
Big on scary language, short on content. Par for the PMI course.
Hey fan club, you’re a f i (I’ll let you de-code). Apparently you don’t understand the difference between 100% legal ad-supported installs with informed consent, disclosure, easy uninstalls, etc. VS no-consent no-disclosure no-uninstall fly-by malware trojan installs. Do you have trouble distinguishing between black and white too?
He’s right the title is misleading – it’s adware and not clickjacking. Companies do this legally daily. One is a fortune 500 company they don’t redirect they do popups and that traffic is redirected.
Ask Google what “clickjacking” is. It’s something completely different.
I didn’t read anywhere in the article that the installs were fly-by. Just a lazy article and writer. But what is interesting is that the US Gov claims to have world powers now as you saw with kim.com etc…
This article is actually straight from the DOJ press release that was sent to us.
Wow is that real Pecelattin, I hope DOj sent me too like this..
Fatima Hipolito recently posted..How to Get Rid of Stretch Marks Naturally
I hope he gets ass raped