Researchers at an IT security company Heimdal Security have discovered a number of compromised web pages ranked on google for keywords like Java JRE, MSN 7, and Windows 8.
Basically, while searching for software like Java JRE, MSN 7 and Windows 8 users are finding compromised pages ranked in the top positions. The file on these websites are said to be setup files of this software but in reality they aren’t.
In reality, these files contain malware that once installed can inject all the malware it has been programmed for into the PC and can virtually take over the PC.
[q]“Be careful what you search for”[/q]
SEO software today provide an instant ranking to the keywords and hackers seem to be using one of them to rank their keywords and google as always haven’t yet reacted to the situation.
Similarly another campaign from spammers is to drive people to pornography sites. This is also done quite similar to the software campaign, but the pages for this campaign are having Angler exploit kit fitted for any users to easily get exploited from the malware, reports Andra Zaharia of Heimdal Security.
Image Source: Heimdal Security
Again to avoid this from happening to you, have Anti-virus installed on your PC as well as on the browser. But, this type of malware is difficult to detect so you need to add extra protection layer for this.
Each site you visit must check its interface, the URL and most importantly its reviews all over the internet. One additional thing is to check green SSL certificate on the site’s URL.
Heimdal Security has reported the issue to google and waiting for a response.
