TAG Briefing on 3ve Ad Fraud Attack

On Tuesday, November 27th, the U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges related to one of the most complex and sophisticated ad fraud operations seen to date.  The successful investigation and indictment of the masterminds behind the 3ve operation – nicknamed “Eve” – marks a major milestone in the industry’s fight against ad fraud.

The 3ve operation manipulated and controlled more than one million IP addresses ranging from residential botnet infections to corporation domains primarily in North America and Europe. At its peak, 3ve produced 10,000+ counterfeit websites and generated more than 3 billion daily fake ad bid requests. As detailed in the WhiteOps and Google white paper: The Hunt for 3ve. 

Because of the significance and relevance of this threat to TAG's member community, TAG hosted a special briefing regarding the 3ve operation today.  The briefing was hosted in partnership with Google and WhiteOps, who had worked together with law enforcement to identify and investigate 3ve. The TAG community had the opportunity to hear about the scope of the 3ve operation and ensuing investigation, as well as its impact on the digital advertising industry. You can access a recording of this presentation here. 

An account of the 3ve's takedown by these two companies was communicated to their respective communities earlier this week. Google's blogpost can be found here and WhiteOps' press release is here. 

TAG will continue to collaborate with its members and law enforcement in order to shine a light on these types of criminal activity and build preventative programs and tools to protect the legitimate digital ad industry.