Chameleons, botnets and click fraud

A number of news reports have picked up on a blog post by Spider.io, where the web analytics firm discusses a botnet that can allegedly generate more than $6 million a month through bogus clicks on online adverts.

The botnet, which Spider.io has dubbed “Chameleon”, is said to have infected some 120,000 computers in the United States.

When I read stories like this, the first thing I want to check is – “Do Sophos products detect this? Are we protecting our customers?”

In this particular case, that’s hard to definitively answer – because Spider.io hasn’t shared much in the way of information. The name isn’t used by other anti-virus products, and no checksums or VirusTotal links are offered in the blog post…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.