Site Rank Optimisation Makes Hackers £5000+ a Day
Hackers are using search engine optimisation techniques to promote their sites. In addition to traditional techniques, hackers are also buying domain names of mispelled words to feed on human error. When a user accidentally types in a mispelled domain name (for example a made-up example could be www.goggle.com instead of www.google.com), the domain eventually redirects the user to the hacker site, thus increasing the hacker site ranking further. Tim Warner of Finjan reports how one gang used this technique to make over £5000 a day for sixteen consecutive days. Tim tells how according to one traffic management site, 1.8 million people were redirected over a period of 16 consecutive days to a bogus site which offered them a free scan security of their PC. The scan was bogus and would report several problems with the user’s computer and then make a special offer for some security software to repair the problems. 1.79% of the 1.8 million people elected to pay the special offer price of $50 for this software resulting in 1.6 million dollars going to the criminals. In other words $10800 a day for sixteen work days. In this case, the criminals were selling bogus security software. However these sites could easily have been phishing websites or have a malware payload. Tim’s point is that if the malware had been a worm, the criminals would have had 1.8 million starting points to begin their propagation. Wehope you find the contents of this videocast helpful. Please do leave comments and ratings to let us know if you would like more of the same. warmest wishes Ben Chai Chief Editor www.securityvibes.com
