Scareware Distributors Poison Search Results for Google Wave

According to security researchers at Websense, 'scareware' developers have manipulated results obtained from searching Google Wave by using Blackhat SEO poisoning technique so that users searching for the communication program could be exposed to a bogus AV application, as reported by Theregister on October 1, 2009.

Google Wave, which is still under development phase, is a device associated with browsers. It combines e-mails with IM (instant messaging) and real-time collaboration elements of the Internet.

Websense states that Google has reportedly dispatched about 100,000 preview invites for the novel messaging and collaboration device. However, cyber crooks becoming aware of this have released many fake websites appearing as search results related to terms - "google wave download" and "google wave invitation," as reported by Blogs.wsj on September 30, 2009.

Crooks seem to be posting web-pages and blog entries too, which contain those terms so that end-users might be lured and deceived into downloading bogus antivirus program, said security researchers. In reality, the fake antivirus is nothing but a malware that infects computer with malicious codes.

Since the attackers happen to regulate such huge numbers of blogs and web-pages, they inter-link them and make their presence outstanding within Web searches.

Remarking about this, Internet security analysts said that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was meant to optimize websites in such a way that their ranks were raised among search results and made to appear outstanding when certain phrases were searched. Additionally, Blackhat SEO attempts to do just the same but violate search engine rules like non misleading use of page or text elements. The technique could adopt a parasitic move by planting malware on some other web-page that was legitimately high-ranked so that visitors could be diverted without information or consent.

Cyber criminals have manipulated the PageRank system of Google to prominently incorporate malware websites into search results related to Google Wave when phrases like "Google wave invitation" and "google wave demo video" are searched.

Security researchers said that scareware purveyors had poisoned results on Microsoft search engine to make websites serving bogus AV software appear outstanding when search was done for "Microsoft Security Essentials."

Related article: SecureWorks Identifies Bank and Information Stealing Trojan Coreflood

» SPAMfighter News - 10/22/2009