Google vs. Botnets: Fighting The Good Fight

Internet Heavyweights

In one corner, weighing in as one of the most influential companies of our time: Google! In the other, the extremely persistent and one of the biggest threats to the internet: Botnets!

Well, the fight between Google and botnets isn’t exactly like wrestling, it’s more like “a game of chess against an opponent that is constantly changing the rules” as quoted from Inside AdWords.

What are Botnets?

The word ‘Botnets’ is the combination of the words ‘Robot’ and ‘Network’. Essentially, botnets are armies of infected computers, and they are controlled by people with nasty intentions. These computers are tainted with a special type of malware that allows a user to do mischievous things, like accessing private information for example. In Google AdWords case, these botnets automatically click on ads displayed on various websites.

The Cure

So what’s Google doing to combat these pesky programs? We’ll allow them to explain!

“Today we’re further reinforcing our existing botnet defenses across our ad systems through a new feature that automates the filtering of traffic from three of the top ad fraud botnets, amongst those we are monitoring and defending against. One of the key benefits of this new feature is that it is resilient to possible changes to the malware that generates this botnet traffic. This move boosts our defenses against invalid traffic generated by some nasty ad fraud malware, including Bedep and two other malware families that we have code-named Beetal and Changthangi. Together these three botnets are comprised of over 500,000 infected user machines.”

(source: Inside AdWords)

Google posted that on their Inside AdWords blog page. They go on to say that defeating the botnets is not a simple or small task. It requires an ongoing effort of rethinking, re-strategizing, and analysis.

Protect Yourself

Google, is doing an incredible job of fighting these bots without the majority of us even realizing it. While we definitely need to thank them, we also need to make sure we contribute to the fight against botnets by making sure we follow computer best practices. Make sure that your computer is safe by keeping it updated with the latest software, not using pirated software, and avoiding clickbait via email or on the internet. Some antivirus software you can use are McAfee, Norton, and Bitdefender, just to name a few.

If you have any questions about botnets and the fight against them, give us a shout on Twitter or Facebook!