Russian Hackers Stole $5 Million Per Day From Advertisers With Bots and Fake Websites (cnn.com)

Russian hackers have used fake websites and bots to steal millions of dollars from advertisers. According to researchers, the fraud has siphoned more than $180 million from the online ad industry. CNNMoney reports: Dubbed "Methbot," it is a new twist in an increasingly complex world of online crime, according to White Ops, the cybersecurity firm that discovered the operation. Methbot, so nicknamed because the fake browser refers to itself as the "methbrowser," operates as a sham intermediary advertising ring: Companies would pay millions to run expensive video ads. Then they would deliver those ads to what appeared to be major websites. In reality, criminals had created more than 250,000 counterfeit web pages no real person was visiting. White Ops first spotted the criminal operation in October, and it is making up to $5 million per day -- by generating up to 300 million fake "video impressions" daily. According to White Ops, criminals acquired massive blocks of IP addresses -- 500,000 of them -- from two of the world's five major internet registries. Then they configured them so that they appeared to be located all over the United States. They built custom software so that computers (at those legitimate data centers) acted like real people viewing those ads. These "people" even appeared to have Facebook accounts (they didn't), so that premium ads were served. Hackers fooled ad fraud blockers because they figured out how to build software that mimicked a real person who only surfed during the daytime -- using the Google Chrome web browser on a Macbook laptop.

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Re:RUSSIAN HACKERS

[smooth wombat]

You conveniently leave out the key detail: Hillary Clinton was never involved in the deal. You further leave out that the Canadian government was also involved and had to sign off on the deal.

You also leave out that in addition to the State Department there were eight other agencies involved with the deal, including the Director of National Intelligence.

But I guess in your fantasy world Hillary was able to cajole all these people, including a foreign government, to make the deal because in a round-about manner her foundation received legal foreign donations from a country who was in negotiation to buy a uranium mine, a deal in which she was never involved with. Yeah, sounds completely plausible.