Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, December 21

• Russian Cyberforgers Steal Millions a Day With Fake Sites: In a twist on the peddling of fake news to real people, researchers say a Russian cyberforgery ring has created more than half a million fake internet users and 250,000 fake websites to trick advertisers into collectively paying as much as $5 million a day for video ads that are never watched. The fraud, which began in September and is still going on, represents a new level of sophistication among criminals who seek to profit by using bots — computer programs that pretend to be people — to cheat advertisers. The scheme exploited known flaws in the system of digital advertising, including the lack of a consistent, reliable method for tracking ads and ensuring that they are shown to the promised audience. The spoofed outlets include a who’s who of the web: video-laden sites like Fox News and CBS Sports, large news organizations like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, major content platforms like Facebook and Yahoo, and niche sites like Allrecipes.com and AccuWeather. Although the main targets were in the United States, news organizations in other countries were also affected. To carry out the operation: The Methbot forgers first took numeric internet addresses they controlled and falsely registered them in the names of well-known internet service providers. The forgers then associated the addresses with 571,904 bots designed to mimic human web surfers. The perpetrators connected the bots to the automated advertising networks that sell unsold ad space for thousands of websites. A bot would pretend to visit a website like CNN.com, and the ad networks would conduct a microsecond bidding war against one another to show a brand’s video ad. But instead of going to the real CNN, the bot’s web browser would go to a fake site that nobody could see, and the ad would play there. Finally, the system would report fake data to the ad networks and advertisers to convince them that humans had watched the ad on the real content site. The thieves then collected payment for the ads.

• BlackBerry's Bet on Software Over Handsets Begins to Pay Off: BlackBerry Ltd. boosted its fiscal 2017 earnings outlook and posted a profit in the third quarter, showing the company’s bet on moving more into software and completely away from handsets is paying off. Fiscal third-quarter earnings per share, excluding some items, were 2 cents, compared with analysts’ average estimate of a loss of 1 cent. BlackBerry said it now expects to post a profit for the full year, up from a prior range of break even to a five-cent loss, according to a statement Tuesday. Shares rose as much as 4.4 percent, the biggest intraday gain in two months. They were up 1.2 percent to $7.80 at 1:26 p.m. in New York. Total revenue declined and missed estimates, but the profit numbers and forecast show BlackBerry’s transition to a higher-margin software company from ailing smartphone maker is hitting Chief Executive Officer John Chen’s targets. The adjusted profit margin was almost 70 percent of revenue, its highest ever. “I don’t consider ourselves in a turnaround anymore,’’ Chen told reporters at the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. “We’ll make money this year. Nobody believed us in the beginning.’’