RSS Alerts

Related Links

Related Stories

  • Comment: What’s your (SEO) poison?
    SEO poisoning is an increasingly popular method of attack for cybercriminals, and one that shows they are using more sophisticated techniques. In the last year, attackers have poisoned search results on everything from the MTV Video Music Awards to Google Wave invitations. Patrik Runald of Websense asks what makes these attacks such a success, and what does this mean for 2010?
  • 2009 was a record year for malware
    A PandaLabs report claims that 2009 will go down as perhaps the most prolific in malware history. In 2009, malware creators tapped into search tools used by the majority of web surfers, and exploited current events and popular culture.
  • Searching for Security
    With more than 30 000 web pages being compromised every day, search engine results could increasingly lead to malware infection. Kari Larsen asks what the search engines are doing to mitigate security threats, and how users can protect themselves
  • Gumblar malware attack sweeps web
    A modified attack that alters Google searches is taking the web by storm according to security researchers, who have identified more malware domains being used in the attack.
  • Northern Iowa upset of Kansas leads to infected online search results
    When the number one seed in this year’s NCAA basketball tournament fell to the University of Northern Iowa over the weekend, black hats wasted little time playing the SEO game and thereby poising search engine results with malware-infected pages.

News

Fake search engines used to divert users to malware infected websites

07 May 2009

Hackers are starting to create fake search engine sites to divert hapless internet users to malware infected websites, says PandaLabs, the research operation of Panda Security.

According to researchers at PandaLabs, when internet users look for popular text searches such as 'flu statistics,' they are being offered URLs that lead them to websites containing video reports.

These video reports require users to download new 'video codecs' to view them, but the download/install code is actually a malware infection, says the IT security vendor Panda Security.

The nett result of the install is that users are infected with fake antivirus applications which then attempt to extort money from users by pretending their PC is infected and only the newly-installed IT security application can remove the 'infection.'

The situation is being compounded, Infosecurity notes, with a similar methodology applied to releases of the latest movies via BitTorrent file-sharing indexes.

A search for the latest Star Trek film - which is released to UK cinemas this week - for example, gives BitTorrent users access to what appears to be a 700MB download file of the film, which then requires users to install a 'Masters Release video codec.'

The download appears to be a piece of malware that routes users to a number of rogue websites using a bogus search engine add-in to the user's web browser software.

And as well as being infected, users still cannot view their copy of the Star Trek film - which appears to be another film entirely.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the infected copy of the Masters Release of Star Trek is being fileshared by thousands of users on the internet.

 

 

This article is featured in:
Application Security • Internet and Network Security • Malware and Hardware Security

 

Comment on this article

You must be registered and logged in to leave a comment about this article.

Copyright © 2010
Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Website Design Working with water