Inside Google's Secret War Against Ad Fraud
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In a conference room nine floors above London’s St. Giles High Street, a Russian engineer named Sasha booted up a computer and began giving me instructions.
“First step, let’s go to some website,” he commanded. “AdAge.com, how about that one?” As the page loaded on my browser, a stream of code ran down the screen in a separate window to the left. After a few seconds, Sasha explained what was happening. “I’m afraid that when you’re dealing with our team, you shouldn’t just go to a website when we tell you,” he said. The computer, brand new, was already infected. “You are participating in a botnet.”
Actually, the connection I was operating on was hacked, not AdAge.com; visiting any site on the internet would have infected the computer. But Sasha appeared to be enjoying my discomfort, and his work was just beginning.
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