SEO Poisoning: What to Look out for and How to Defend Against It

Curious about SEO poisoning and wondering how it works? SEO poisoning is a tool used by cybercriminals. Considered a cyber attack method, cybercriminals strategically use search engine optimization (SEO) to direct traffic to their malicious sites (possibly containing downloads with malware).

While SEO poisoning has been in existence for a while, as SEO becomes more widely used and accepted practice by companies, internet users are taking notice. When a cybercriminal uses SEO poisoning, their secret techniques lead their site to show up higher and at the top of results in Google, Bing, etc. This can be frustrating for legitimate companies who see their clients being tricked by sites that might lead them to malware. Worse, fake sites might mimic real sites, to trick their users into clicking on them or downloaded viruses!

Is SEO Poisoning Always Bad?

Yes and no. Unfortunately, there are plenty of bad people online who use SEO poisoning to give your computer malware. They dwell worldwide, so you might lose money to one in the United States, while they live half a work away. Generally, after finding an SEO poisoned link in a search engine and clicking on it, one of the following happens:

Malware is downloaded, and your information was stolen.
Then a botnet infects your computers.
Information-stealing Trojan horse (virus) is installed and leaks your information to hackers.
A cybercriminal discovers another way to take over your computer or steal your private information to use for identity theft.

Their Goal in All Four Scams? Money … Your Money, via Theft

A more harmless form of SEO poisoning is when valid companies and startups use the practice of creating SEO friendly pages to trick a search engine’s algorithm and rank higher, for their success. They do this to avoid paying for high priced paid advertisements or garnishing site traffic more traditionally.

While this is common in today’s competitive online world, the SEO poisoned sites we are talking about don’t want legitimate businesses to get ahead. Instead, these cybercriminals wish to climb to the top of results and get user money in far less honorable ways.

How Can You Combat This Type of Attack?

Use caution around major holidays or when searching about a viral subject matter. An attack might also occur during big tech releases (say, Android or the iPhone) or even while you look up election results. Cybercriminals famously use any occasion which has a lot of searchable interest as the perfect time for their attack.
When you look through your search engine results, also look at the actual URL which appears. Is it a website you’ve never heard of, with an odd arrangement of words in the URL title? For example: Maybe a URL ends in “.ru” which means it’s a foreign site and more likely to contain a hack.

Avoid sites which redirect you. This is because a tried and true method of cybercriminals is to have you go to a clocked URL or seemingly ordinary website, but then continually reroute you until you land on the corrupt page of their choice or MaaS (Malware as a Service).
Perhaps you’re directed to a real company that uses SEO to promote sales for their company, when you were looking for an article, etc. If so, click away from that page and make sure you are using https://.

Do Anti-Malware Tools Protect Against SEO Poisoning?

The reason it is hard to combat SEO poisoning is that more traditional web attack protections (such as URL filtering) might not work. This is because a seemingly ordinary sites redirect you to malicious sites through legitimate websites. This can be done intentionally, or after a legitimate website is hacked and changed.

If you were redirected repeatedly or suspect you have a computer virus or hack, run a virus scan. Also, keep your anti-malware, anti-virus, and firewall up to date and enable your browser’s security features!

Concerned your identity has been stolen or compromised? Try Berify today!

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