Digital Compass

One can make a lot of money with a few parked domains and a botnet these days. Enterprising criminals register dummy websites such as www.symanyec.com or www.kaspasky.com, which are visited by surfers who hit the wrong keys accidentally. The fake sites contain ad banners disguised to look like navigation menus. Since the owners are paid for every click on the ad, for example via Google AdSense, these domains are worth a lot of money. But these revenues can be multiplied easily as well: If a hacker has control over a number of computers in a botnet,

He can have them click on the ad banner of his website automatically and as often as he likes. According to security specialists at Click Forensics, even though the trick is relatively new, 25 percent of "click fraud" now comes from such botnets.