Google: The Top Search Engine For Malware
According to a recent study conducted by
Barracuda labs, Google remains the top search engine
for malicious attackers. After reviewing 25,000
trends and 5.5 million searches, Barracuda concluded
that attackers rely on Google for poisoned keywords.
Yahoo search, Bing and Twitter were also studied,
however, Google fell into the top stop due to their
position as the market share leader.
Study highlights:
- Google is the number one malware distributor
and is churning twice the amount of malware
compared to Bing, Yahoo search and Twitter. The
breakdown is as follows: Google at 69 percent,
Yahoo! at 18 percent, Bing at 12 percent and
Twitter at 1 percent. I suppose tweeting isn’t
that bad after all?
- More than 50% of the malware found was
between the hours of 4:00am and 10:00am.
Interestingly, the top search terms by malware
distributors contain the name of an NFL player,
three Hollywood actresses, a Playboy Playmate
and a fake Harvard college student.
- Based on Barracuda’s data, the topic of
choice for cybercriminals were searches related
to spyware. However, all of these searches are
only valid for a period of time. Contrary to
popular belief, cybercriminals are not picky
when it comes to search words. They only use hot
buzzwords for their attacks.
This process of using poisoned search engine
results is termed blackhat SEO. What happens is the
cyber attackers use legitimate traffic from hot
buzzwords, compromising thousands of sites, which
exposes the end user to everything the cyber
criminal has to offer, scary right?
Google is aware of the attacks and is catching up
quickly, however the cybercriminals are still
getting the last laugh. Always one step ahead,
cybercriminals essentially are playing the SEO game
like every other legitimate business out there.
According to Google’s April 2010 report, scareware
accounted for 15% of all malware and scareware
represented half of malware that is being delivered
through malvertising.
Unfortunately, these stats do not pose well for
real, legitimate marketers out there. Cybercriminals
are playing the same game and using tools and
tactics that every other marketer is using. Now if
Google is the leader in online search, one would
think that they would not be easily tricked? Their
web crawlers should have the ability to distinguish
between legitimate content and malicious content.
Do you think that Google is doing everything in
their power to protect end users from poisoned
search engine results? You be the judge. |
