Transparency is a cornerstone of Simpli.fi’s business. Because of that we wanted to make you aware of an industry issue regarding a piece of malware affecting the digital advertising space: Methbot. We’ve provided insight below on what Methbot is and how Simpli.fi is continually working to protect your business, and you can read more background and detail via AdExchanger or White Ops, the digital advertising security firm that discovered Methbot.

What is Methbot?

Methbot is a piece of malware (malicious software) identified by White Ops and being attributed to a Russian hacking operation. Methbot is a profitable ad-fraud operation that has been observed generating false IP addresses associated with real ISP’s, as well as spoofing fake URLs associated with very large and reputable online publications. Their primary target has been large player video.

What is the impact to Simpli.fi customers?

Simpli.fi has run analysis against the public list of IP ranges affected, and the impact on our advertisers is very low. We have been seeing significantly less than 1/10th of one percent of spend on our platform to the IP ranges affected.

What are we doing about it?

Simpli.fi employs a wide variety of inside and outside technologies in an effort to identify both fraudulent users and traffic on a daily basis. As an added measure of security Simpli.fi has already implemented the list of known associated IP addresses released by White Ops this morning. We have also determined that our block list updates from our current partners did provide a layer of protection from this botnet by identifying many of the affected IPs as those we have blocked for some time.

Simpli.fi will continue to monitor Methbot and be vigilant in our efforts to protect you, our advertisers. If you have further questions about how this malware could affect your business, please contact your Simpli.fi account representative.