US charges 7 in Internet advertising fraud case

A crew of Internet bandits devised an international scheme to hijack more than 4 million computers worldwide, manipulating traffic on Netflix, the Internal Revenue Service and other popular websites to generate at least $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue, federal prosecutors said.

About 500,000 computers in the United States were infected with malware, including those owned by ordinary users, educational institutions, nonprofit groups and government agencies like NASA, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. Bharara called the case "the first of its kind" because the suspects set up their own "rogue servers" to secretly reroute Internet traffic to sites where they had a cut of the advertising revenue. Six of the seven people named in the indictment were Estonians who were in custody in that country, and extradition was being sought, prosecutors said. A Russian remained at large. As part of the takedown, the FBI disabled the rogue servers without interrupting Internet service, authorities said.