Disruption of Microsoft Search Results with Malicious Links

Immediately after receiving intimation of malicious links on the Safety & Security Center website of Microsoft, it detained the search capability of the website, reports softpedia on July 11, 2011.

Black hat search engine optimization (BHSEO) can be defined as a common method used for distributing malware or promoting spam sites. The method is used for intriguing legit websites and generating pages under their domain containing popular search keywords.

Cyber criminals use other hacked websites to re-link the pages and in this effort search result for the targeted terms increases the. These pages are designed to redirect legit visitors to the spiteful websites.

Alex Eckelberry, General Manager of Security Software at GFI, denoted that the BHSEO campaign spotted on July 8, 2011 was quite unusual, as reported by softpedia on July 11, 2011.

The fact that makes the campaign indifferent is its capability to poison the normal search results with actual searchers. Users were receiving a previous search page as a search result, denoted Eckelberry, according to computerworld on July 11, 2011.

Reason enough; Eckelberry thought that Microsoft is saving search results to facilitate users to forward searches to others who use Twitter.

Pointing out to the matter, Eckelberry noted that Microsoft site's Twitter feature was used to create a lot of searches that probably led to other porn sites. Hackers considerably used the unique ability of the site for saving a search against the site.

However, it is noteworthy that the exploits of Microsoft came to fore within a short period of John Howie's (Senior Director of online services security and compliance governance at Microsoft) address to Brtain's Computing magazine. In the address, Howie was quite confident of Microsoft's security system and said that unlike RSA or Sony, Microsoft was extremely unlikely of being hacked by such advanced threat, reports informaitonweek on July 11, 2011.

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