The Vanishing Click-Fraud Case

PreacherTom writes "In March of 2004, a computer programmer arrived at Google's offices with one goal in mind: blackmail. He had invented a program called "Google Clique", which could generate millions of fake clicks to Google's ads. The price to avoid disaster: $150,000. At the time, it didn't end well for the programmer; Google had the police in the next room. However, a few days ago the U.S. Attorney quietly dropped the case. The reason: apparently Google was unwilling to cooperate with prosecutors. Why the odd behavior?"

Comments

*groan*

[voice_of_all_reason]

What's with both the article and summary playing to the channel 5 action stopper team "Why?!?!?" question?

Duh, that's the point of blackmail. You don't show your hand until you have something that will discourage the victim from turning you into the police. Obviously, the guy could've released the method to the public and caused Google more than letting him go.

Re:*groan*

[TubeSteak]

Obviously, the guy could've released the method to the public and caused Google more than letting him go.

I bet Google was more worried about the discovery process than the guy's program.

The guy could really do some damage by requesting all kinds of information which might become public record... information that Google wouldn't want to let out.

Umm..

[OneSmartFellow]

First question: What did they have to gain by persuing it ? not much me thinks

Next question: What did they have to lose by persuing it ? trade secrets, embarassment, other

Analysis: Very predictable.

Coincidence?

[spellraiser]

<tinfoilhat>

But on Nov. 22, the U.S. Attorney's Office quietly dismissed charges against Bradley.

November 22 is the day they killed Kennedy! Coincidence? You be the judge ...

</tinfoilhat>

Did Google hire the guy?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Did Google hire the guy?

It's a serious question; some firms actually do hire the black hatters who targetted them.

Re:Did Google hire the guy?

[try_anything]

Right. Black hat hackers really want boring, defensive corporate jobs; they just need a foot in the door. It's just like the time a teenager did donuts on my lawn, and I hired him as a chauffeur, because what he REALLY wanted was to wear a silly little hat and be at his employer's beck and call ten hours a day.

There's no risk of them getting bored and using your company resources to attack other targets, because they love bourgeois success too much to risk it for a thrill.

White hat hackers, on the other hand, are completely unemployable. They're whistleblowers waiting to happen.

only 150K?

[elcid73]

I'm curious... if he could generate 30K per month with his program, why only extort for 150K?

Why not just run it for 5 months and call it good?

Re:only 150K?

[antifoidulus]

One possibility that he was playing chicken with google and his software really didn't work as advertised. He probably figured that to an individual, $150k is a lot of money, but to google it is the proverbial fart in a windstorm so they would just let it slide under the table rather than generate lots of press. However, he figured wrong and even though google isn't pressing charges(perhaps due to the fact that they would reveal more information than its worth) the huckster still got just deserts: he did spend some time in prison and his name is pretty much ruined forever. Would you want to hire the guy who tried to defraud google out of $150k? Can't imagine it would help his job prospects any.

Re:only 150K?

[skotte]

This got me thinking. Perhaps he wanted the lump sum which he assessed as being the value of running it a number of months, until Google caught up with him and repaired the bug. Which then suggests a possible scenario in which he didn't so much come planing to blackmail, but rather came planning to sell his information. Mind you, I don't know the guy or the situation really. Some people have said he's a real knob, which could be. But I can easily imagine him identifying a hole, and thinking to himself "Hey I could use this, or I could sell it to anyone and everyone -- or I could sell it to google. That wouldn't be nearly as illegal as some options, and maybe they'd give me a real job." And then his line of thinking kind of spiraled out of control a bit. Google, fFor their part, saw a hacker kid, didn't really want to encourage him at all, but didn't see any need to nail him to a wall either. Code gets fFixed, kid goes fFree, Google doesn't spend a million dollars just to sue some geek.

Re:Because Google makes money off click fraud

[Aladrin]

Except that if their plan was to profit from his 'fraud', they wouldn't have set him up in the first place. They'd have just 'called his bluff' and let him do it.

Instead, they chose to have him arrested and let the world know about his scheme. We don't know WHY they chose not to prosecute, but I seriously doubt it has anything to do with being evil.