Scammers Using Redirectors on Websites of Microsoft & IRS

As per the University of Alabama at Birmingham, scammers from December 19, 2008 to December 22, 2008 were planting redirector links on websites of universities, magazines and most notably, the IRS.gov and Microsoft.com domains.

According to the news reports, the Google URL, http://www.google.com/search?q=idg&btnI=3564, utilizes Google's "I'm feeling lucky" utility to send surfers onto IDG.com.

Gary Warner, Director of the Department of Research in Computer Forensics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that the miscreants have deceptively got search engines to return their malevolent links to a large number of search phrases, as reported by ComputerWorld on December 23, 2008.

Warner also said that the bad guys had done the trick with the help of special software that embedded the redirector links on several thousand blog comments, blog fiction and guestbook entries, all encompassing internet.

Meanwhile, to verify that scammers are misusing Microsoft, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham carried out a search activity. In that activity, a search for "Microsoft Office 2002 download" gave a Microsoft.com redirection link as the first hit on the list. Moreover, the link led visitors to a malevolent website that launched attack code from the Web and also tricked them to download bogus anti-virus software.

By the evening of December 23, 2008, Microsoft rectified the problem so that the Microsoft.com link that appears in the Google search hits no longer takes surfers to the malware-laden website. Similarly, IRS at its own end dealt with the same problem.

Security researchers state that if criminals are able to plant a redirector on a reputed website like IRS.gov or Microsoft.com, they could get their deceptive links to appear on higher ranks among the Google search results. This is possible, as both of the websites are very powerful as far as their weight in search engines is concerned.

Meantime, the Federal Trade Commission estimates that about one million users were deceptively taken into downloading other phony anti-virus products such as WinAntivirus, WinFixer, XP Antivirus, ErrorSafe and DriveCleaner.

Related article: Scammers Exploit Tax System Resulting in ID Theft

» SPAMfighter News - 31-12-2008

All SPAMfighter products offer a free trial!

SPAMfighter is a free spam filter for Outlook, Outlook Express,Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird.

Optimize your Slow PC for better performance. Try FREE scan now

Disk space recovery
and disk optimization. Try FULL-DISKfighter free

SPAMfighter Exchange Module is a Spam filter for Exchange server - Free 30 days trial.

Remove Spyware with SPYWAREfighter - Free 30 days trial

Antivirus software for your Windows PC - Free 30 days trial