Spammers Exploit ‘Live Spaces’ for Search Engine Optimization

According to the security company eSoft, spammers promoting pharmaceuticals websites are shifting their attention away from Google to Microsoft's blogging platform Windows Live Spaces.

eSoft via the Threat Center Live Blog explains that cyber criminals are utilizing the Live Spaces platform to open new registered accounts which are subsequently used by them to connect with their fake websites. Consequently, through the poisoning of search engine results, the criminals are raising rankings of those websites.

Moreover, the criminals' spam mails carry the fake blogs' URLs that divert Web-surfers to websites advertising penis pills. The method apparently is devised to bypass anti-spam filters, which may have already marked the bogus sites.

The misuse of fraudulent blogging sites on Live Spaces represents 'link spamming' in a refined form. Thus comments are posted to legally established blogs, which provide web-links leading to evasive pharmacy sites and similar other sites.

According to eSoft, the recently launched job spam fraud via Google also invaded the Live Spaces blog hosting environment of Microsoft.

The security company also reports that attacks resembling the Live.com spamming (that takes to fake pharmaceuticals websites) have also been executed while targeting both Blogger and Yahoo sites. A large number of separate maliciously created web-pages were noticed. These were designed to acquire high ranking on search engines so that they bypassed anti-spam filters.

Meanwhile, one thing is clear from this new type of attack, irrespective of the distribution method i.e. cyber criminals will not cease their operations rather keep on evolving fresh techniques for advertising their fake websites. They are increasingly using BlackHat SEO or tactics of poisoning of search engine results to get more-and-more surfers to click on malicious and bogus websites to spread more contamination.

On an ending note, numerous BlackHat SEO exploit widely read current news stories like celebrity deaths such as Michael Jackson, or other tragic events. The purpose is to get Web-surfers to click on malicious web-links that have been fraudulently driven to higher rankings among search engine results through methods like the one mentioned above.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 1/2/2010