Over 13 percent Google searches lead to malicious links
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 03 March 2010, 00:18 IST
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Over 13 percent Google searches lead to malicious links
Bangalore: Over 13 percent of all searches on Google looking for popular and trending topics will lead to malicious links and searching for the latest news on the earthquake in Chile and the tsunami hitting Hawaii are no exception. Both are now used to lure people into downloading fake antivirus products, according to security firm Websense. Usually the links in the search results look like ordinary links pointing to regular web pages. This time the cyber criminals have changed tactics to make their search results look even more convincing; by tricking Google into thinking it's a PDF file. By making the search result look like a PDF it gives the link more authenticity. Perhaps it's a research paper or at least a better written article. The likelihood that a user will click on these types of links is probably higher than if it were just another random web link. Websense says that this is the first time we've seen the attackers use this approach but considering how aggressive the rogue AV gangs are, it's not a surprise that they continue to refine their techniques to get people to "buy" their products. The Rogue AV file itself is currently detected by 26.20 percent of the antivirus engines used by VirusTotal.

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