Cybercrooks offer click fraud that can render a competitor's advertising efforts for their business ineffective.
One of them is called GoodGoogle and its purpose is to "consume" the competitor's budget for advertising on Google AdWords by inflating spending.
This type of service, advertised on underground, Russian-speaking forums, is nothing new in the criminal world.
The specifics of how it works are unclear, but Brian Krebs, who contacted the providers of the GoodGoogle service, says that for $100/€75 one could block three to ten ads for a 24-hour period.
It seems that for ten times that price, the service could disrupt a competitor's advertising efforts indefinitely. Furthermore, the security blogger visited websites where customers were showing how happy they were with GoodGoogle.
Brian Krebs claims that the money is delivered in virtual currency to the service provider, who also offers support and a guarantee for the first three weeks.
Despite the lack of clear details about how this particular trick works, there are some theories.
Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and the University of California, Berkeley, told Krebs that the technique likely involves leveraging a botnet to conduct the ad-clicking and specially designed software to control when the click occurs, so the actions appear to be legitimate.
