Website Exploit + SEO = Payday
Back in October of 2008, We Watch Your Website’s security blog reported that malicious hackers were actually using successful SEO campaigns to spread a huge money making bit of malware to unsuspecting victims. The attack was maniacally brilliant. By finding vulnerable sites in the SERPs for the term “Halloween costume”, they infect the legitimate site with malicious code that will silently redirect (redirecting to a different page without changing the URL) a visitor to a site that claims that their computer is infected with a virus that can be quickly and easily removed by purchasing their advertised anti-virus solution.
Don’t think this will work? Evidence from Panda Labs shows that the attacks were earning malicious hackers roughly $14 million a month.
SEO Strategies
The foundation of the attack lies in a company’s hard work to earn a decent enough ranking on the SERP for a targeted term. But abusing SEO doesn’t end there. Once the site has been identified and exploited, the attacker actually use keywords that have been optimized for higher search engine rankings in the redirect to help push their infected sites up in the rankings. So by increasing the rankings of their target websites, the attackers are able to create a greater need among their potential customers.
Holiday time attacks
According to Panda Labs, there is also a fluctuation in these types of attacks as the economy makes headlines. With an estimated $168 million a year to be made of this scam, you can bet that there is nothing to suggest this attack to slow down anytime soon. Being the holiday season, attacks are expected to increase as Christmas time is one of the busiest times of the year for malicious hackers. With IT staff taking time to be with family and shoppers more likely to let down their guard as they look for online deals, the holidays are ripe for attacks.
Prevention
As a user, the best way to protect yourself from this type of attack is to ignore warnings that don’t come from your installed security software. If your anti-malware solution isn’t warning you of infection, odds are a website or a pop-up that you have never seen before is there to help you out – no questions asked.
Owners of websites can do their part to protect their customers, and their SEO ranking. A few simple ways to tell if your site has been exploited with this attack are:
- Visitors complain about getting viruses from your site.
- Visitors complain about being redirected from your site.
- Google or Yahoo! have listed your site as a possible harmful site.
- Your traffic dramatically increases or decreases.
- Check the last login logs on your website’s server. If the IP address is unfamiliar, your site may have been exploited.
Of course, visit your site on a regular basis. If you notice a warning about a possible infection when you are viewing your site, you may be the victim of an attack.
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