View source for Clickbot.A

{{Short description|Computer botnet}}
'''Clickbot.A''' is a [[botnet]] that is used for [[click fraud]].<ref>{{Cite book |doi=10.1109/WSE.2011.6081830|isbn=978-1-4577-0700-1|chapter=Cracking the Smart Click ''Bot''|title=2011 13th IEEE International Symposium on Web Systems Evolution (WSE)|pages=125–134|year=2011|last1=Walgampaya|first1=Chamila|last2=Kantardzic|first2=Mehmed|s2cid=11092091 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Daswani|first1=Niel|last2=Stoppelman|first2=Michael|last3=the Google Click Quality and Security Teams|date=2007|title=The Anatomy of Clickbot.A|url=http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.108.5962|journal=USENIX Hotbots|publisher=Google, Inc.}}</ref>

The bot was first discovered by [[Swa Frantzen]] at [[SANS Institute|SANS]]' [[Internet Storm Center]] in May 2006.  At that time, the botnet had infected about 100 machines.  The infected population grew to over 100,000 machines within one month.

The bot was written as a plugin to [[Internet Explorer]] that was downloaded by IE users. It operated by using victims' computers to automatically click on [[Pay per click|pay-per-click]] [[Online advertising|Internet advertisements]].

It is also used to steal passwords from unsuspecting users.

==See also==
{{div col}}
* [[Browser Helper Object]]
* [[Botnet]]
* [[Click farm]]
* [[Click fraud]]
* [[Download.ject]]
* [[Trojan horse (computing)]]
* [[ZeroAccess botnet]]
* [[Zombie (computer science)]]
{{div col end}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Hacking in the 2000s}}

[[Category:Internet bots]]
[[Category:Trojan horses]]

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