underground economy

ICSI in New Scientist

“US Internet Providers Hijacking Users’ Search Queries”
August 4, 2011 | Jim Giles, New Scientist

Searches made by millions of internet users are being hijacked and redirected by some internet service providers in the US. Patents filed by Paxfire, the company involved in the hijacking, suggest that it may be part of a larger plan to allow ISPs to generate revenue by tracking the sites their customers visit. It may also be illegal.

ICSI in the Electronic Frontier Foundation

“Widespread Hijacking of Search Traffic in the United States”
August 4, 2011 | Peter Eckersley, the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Earlier this year, two research papers reported the observation of strange phenomena in the Domain Name System (DNS) at several US ISPs. On these ISPs' networks, some or all traffic to major search engines, including Bing, Yahoo! and (sometimes) Google, is being directed to mysterious third party proxies.

ICSI in Ars Technica

“Small ISPs Use “Malicious” DNS Servers to Watch Web Searches, Earn Cash”
August 5, 2011 | Nate Anderson, Ars Technica

Nearly 2 percent of all US Internet users suffer from "malicious" domain name system (DNS) servers that don't properly turn website names like google.com into the IP addresses computers need to communicate on the 'Net. And, to make matters worse, the problem isn't caused by hackers or malware, but by the local ISPs people pay for access to the Internet. Though the 2 percent number might sound low, it's astonishingly high for a core Internet function, as is clear from the fact that no other country—apart from Haiti—sees more than 0.17 percent malicious DNS servers. What's gone wrong in America?

ICSI in PC Magazine

“Some ISPs Redirecting Search Traffic Without Consent: Report”
August 5, 2011 | Mark Hachman, PC Magazine

A number of regional ISPs appear to be transparently rerouting search queries for their own profit, according to researchers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Researchers at the International Computer Science Institute and the EFF said they believe that the redirected searches are being controlled by a company called Paxfire, which is working with several ISPs to redirect searches through Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing.

ICSI in TechCrunch

"Study: Some ISPs Still Hijacking Search Results (Lawsuit Follows)"
August 5, 2011 | Devin Coldewey, TechCrunch

Try this: open up a new tab and type “kindle” into the address bar. Chances are it will send you to a Google search results page. That is, unless the ISP is intercepting such rogue queries and doing what they will with them. A pair of computer scientists at UC Berkeley have found that at least a dozen ISPs are still doing this, the result being that, for example, when someone types “kindle” into the address bar, it doesn’t go to your preferred search results, but directly to Amazon’s Kindle page.

ICSI in International Business Times

“ISPs Regularly Hijack Searches for Profit, Study Shows”
August 8, 2011 | James Lee Philips, International Business Times

A recent study shows that a single company is responsible for a number of small ISPs making extra money using nefarious search engine hijacks. The report was a joint effort by Peter Eckersley of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Christian Kreibich, Vern Paxson, and Nicholas Weaver of ICSI (International Computer Science Institute) of Berkeley, California.

ICSI in The Daily Californian

"Research Finds Some Internet Service Providers Hijack Searches"
August 10, 2011 | Jonathan Tam, The Daily Californian

Some Internet Service Providers who work with third-party proxy servers may be redirecting and possibly hijacking their users’ search queries, according to a blog posted last Thursday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which worked in collaboration with UC Berkeley-affiliated researchers. Researchers at the International Computer Science Institute, a campus-affiliated institute, began their work over two years ago and discovered that some service providers routed brand-related term searches in the search engines Yahoo!, Bing and Google to brand websites instead of the intended search engine results.

ICSI in GigaOM

"If You Can't Trust Your ISP, Who Can You Trust?"
August 11, 2011 | Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM, Reprinted in The New York Times

Some Internet Service Providers have apparently been hijacking the search traffic from customers typing keywords into Yahoo and Bing search engines, and now the backlash has begun. Instead of searching on their chosen search page, ISPs — using gear from a company called Paxfire — are reportedly routing the traffic to the ISP’s servers or to Paxfire’s servers and delivering search results that can generate money for firms selected by the ISP as well as the ISP itself. Now Paxfire has been hit with a class-action lawsuit and may face a Congressional inquiry.

ICSI in TechRepublic

"Search-Query Hijacks and Redirection: What You Need to Know"
September 6, 2011 | Michael Kassner, TechRepublic

Takeaway: Do you trust the results returned from your chosen search engine? Michael Kassner looks into search engine hijacking and redirection.

An Inside View of the Online Pharmaceuticals Industry

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Financial records of three vendors that sell unauthorized and counterfeit pharmaceuticals over the Internet show, among other things, that they rely on a relatively small number of affiliate advertisers to drive traffic to their sites. An analysis of the records by Networking researchers and their collaborators gives a rare insider’s view of the finances of illicit online activity.