SEO Poisoning Attacks
This isn’t necessarily something you will come across when engaging an SEO company for search engine optimization services, but it is definitely something to be aware of when you’re surfing the web. Cyber criminals love to monitor search trends and target popular search phrases for their attacks. So if you’re searching for the latest scoop on a popular movie or your favorite celebrity’s latest scuffle with the law, beware of the websites you visit to get your media fix!
As mentioned, scammers will pay attention to search trends and locate websites that rank well for a highly searched topic. The scammers then target those well-ranked websites and look for specific security vulnerabilties that will allow them in infuse malicious code into them. This maliciious code fools the search engines when someone clicks on a result from a search page. It fools the search engines by telling them to load a different web page than the actual page that appears in the result.
Unsuspecting surfers who searched for a popular search phrase will click on a search engine result and automatically be taken to a malicious website that will try to install malware on their computers. If they haven’t kept their anti-virus software up to date they will get infected! A variation of this scheme will launch a fake virus alert and try to convince the visitor to install free “anti-virus” software. Of course, if you elect to install the software you are actually willingly installing malware on your computer!
So the moral of the story is to keep your anti-virus software up to date, always be alert when searching the web, and never install something on your computer unless you’re absolutely sure what you’re installing is safe!
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