Black Hats Use SEO To Poison Search Results

Black Hat hackers continue to use SEO "Search Engine Optimization" to poison search results.  I was recently called over to my wife's PC because she clicked a link in a Google search for swine flu.  The Firefox 3 window now had a warning saying that the site was a "Reported Attack Site!"   We clicked the "Get me out of here!" link and then I explained SEO and search poisoning to my wife.

Black Hat hackers use the latest breaking news or most popular stories to draw users to their malicious links.  Using SEO they have the malicious  link elevated in the search results and then wait for the unsuspecting end user to click the link.   The website will then typically do a drive by install of the latest rouge virus application.

OK, so now that you know a little more about the new risks presented by search engine poisoning, should you still search the web?

The simple answer is "yes"; but  you need to always be cautious.  Make sure you keep your system updated including all your 3rd party applications and always run a current Anti-Virus product with updated signatures.  Never use an old browser to access the web.  I see in my site stats that some of you are still running Internet Explorer 6.  Running an old, insecure browser is a major cause of website borne malware infections.  If you need to run IE6 for some legacy application, you can still install the latest version of Firefox and browse the web with Firefox instead of IE6.

Check the following links for more info on search engine poisoning:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/swine-flu-search-poisoning.html Swine flu search poisoning

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/701 SEO poisoning attacks growing


http://websitehelpers.com/seo/blackhat.html Black Hat SEO


http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/03/10/democratsorg-blog-spam-contributes-to-google-search-poisoning/ Democrats.org Blog Spam Contributes to Google Search Poisoning

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2008/03/massive-iframe-seo-poisoning-attack.html Massive IFRAME SEO Poisoning Attack Continuing

 

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