FBI Warns Ghost Click Malware Still at Large
The damage caused by six regional internet fraudsters continues to ripple, with the FBI warning that over 300,000 machines around the world could still be infected by a program that hijacked computers to rack up false advertising revenue for the owners.
With the perpetrators behind bars since November -- including ringleader Vladimir Tshashtshin, who has been previously convicted in Estonia on Internet fraud, and Anton Ivanov, extradited to the US last week - thousands of computers are still believed to harbor bad settings that instruct them to go to rogue DNS servers to resolve website addresses.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had intercepted all of the known malicious DNS servers in order for users to travel to legitimate sites. However, the intercepted DNS servers and redirects by the FBI will be turned off in July.
The FBI announced on April 23 that it had set up a special page that would allow users to self-check their computers.
Over 568,000 computers around the world were infected by the malware. The malware developers - Estonian residents with alleged ties to organized crime in St. Petersburg - are estimated to have gained 14 million dollars in illegal advertising revenue.
Kristopher Rikken