‘Moshi Monsters’ Search Results Corrupted In New Bhseo Campaign

Security researchers at Panda Security an anti-virus company in Spain are cautioning that a fresh BHSEO (black hat search engine optimization) campaign is going on that is corrupting search results, associated with 'Moshi Monsters,' with malevolent web-links.

A children's online game, Moshi Monsters requires players to support any one amongst a number of animated monsters that reside inside Monstro, a city on the virtual world.

Moreover, while playing the game, players have to solve puzzles which potentially yield virtual money that may be subsequently spent on different things necessary to meet the needs of the monster that's adopted.

In the meantime, during March 2010, the company responsible for Moshi Monsters i.e. Mind Candy reported that there were 15m players at the time, however, that figure has mow increased to more than 24m.

It seems as if cyber-criminals are attempting at taking advantage of the increasing popularity of the game, while they attack the 2m or more players, who join on a monthly basis, by corrupting search engine returns related to Moshi Monsters.

State the researchers at Panda Security, cyber-crooks are using this attack for distributing Adware/MySecurityEngine, the name of a rogueware. Rogueware, popularly called scareware is an essentially nasty piece of malware. It works by getting a victim to hand over money for the complete edition of software that will supposedly clean false positives it displays on the PC screen via pop-ups, system tray notices or bogus scan results.

Worryingly, the PandaLabs researchers further observe that BHSEO assaults which spread corrupted search results are now regarded as a popular means for distributing scareware. Such assaults occur in an automatic fashion and daily, according to Sean-Paul Correll a researcher at PandaLabs. According to him, the assaults are presently the chief dissemination technique for scareware. Lastwatchdog.com reported this during the 1st week of July 2010.

Conclusively, since the said assaults have an accompanying maliciousness, security specialists suggest computer users that in case they have authentic security software on their machines then they must make the best use of it by keeping it up-to-date so that fake security software can be put off.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 8/19/2010