Clickety-Clack ! "Google Adsense Cracked ?"

India's leading technology magazine DIGIT, has had in its November 2007 issue, a serious look at what one Indian security analyst claims is a flaw in Google’s AdSense ! Here is an extract from the Article appearing in the magazine.
Digit Nov 2007 Issue]



Here is how they say, it works !

"Naturally we (Digit) cannot tell you how "Arora's Crack" works, but here's what happens. You have a blog. You sign-up for an Adsense account and get it approved and activated. Google Ads will start appearing on you blog. Then if you have Arora's Script, which is a set of automated tasks and commands, you run it on your site and send out emails to people you know, inviting them, to visit not just your blog, but anything which may interest them like YouTube, etc. The people you mail to need not even need to know about the existence of your blog. When they click on your links and watch, say the videos you linked to, Google credits your adsense account."



In short : The AdSense ads are on your blog, you send links to, say videos, they click and watch that video, and you get paid !


What is important that he claims that he did it quite some time back, and also brought it to the notice of Google. Arora wrote to Google "I would be glad to provide you the complete mechanism, which will take one hour a day, to produce thousand of dollars a month from adsense. I would like to explain this model to any of your representatives". The Incident Response Lead, Google Security Team replied that "We've investigated your claim. At this point, all we can verify is that our automated systems terminated your accounts, as a result of your trying to inflate the clicks. This is exactly how the system is supposed to work. If you supply us with the code and the technical details of the method you mention, we will investigate further".
Although Arora claims that he has around $5000 in his Adsense account, he claims that he has not withdrawn the money as his intentions were only to demonstrate the flaw.
Digit Magazine, has done a detailed study on it. They have also tried that recently, using the same technique, and found that it STILL worked.
Is Google now taking the issue seriously ?
When Digit contacted Google, and told them about this script, Andrew Kovacs a Google spokesman, got back, and asked : "When you ran the script, was it Manish Arora's" ? Clearly his is a name, Google is familiar with! Kovacs has also invited them to Ghosemajumdar, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, Google. "In one email, Kovac said that your (Digits) questions were of 'Top Priority'."
Moral Of The Story

"Each time someone comes up with a new method to exploit a problem with adsense, some people lose money. Each time Google fortifies its defences, it gets even better. Google adsense is far from perfect and, we (Digit) think that Google should not underestimate the gravity of the situation. For the sake of us all, we hope that Google will find a way to patch this up, soon, so that it remains what it is today, a benign Giant, organizing the worlds information. We wish them God Speed" !
Please note that this is only a summary as I see it. For details please refer to the original source/s.
This Article has been sourced from:
Digit Magazine, November 2007 Issue.
Related Links:
Manish Aroras Mgoos Blog.
Manish Aroras Adsense Crack Blog. Now appears empty.