Hacker & Malware Attack Recap
There has been a lot of discussion regarding malware and hackers infecting individual sites and Google’s results this week
If you follow the latest news on search engines and the Internet you are probably aware that there has been a lot of news about hackers hijacking sites to install spam and malware sites showing up in the Google search results. This issue can be a huge problem for users, the major search engines, and individual websites. Here are the problems that can arise.
- Problems for Users: As far as users it is fairly obvious. Users who are searching the major search have a certain level of trust that their sites listed will be free of malware and viruses. If they click on a link they don’t expect a malware or spyware program to be installed without consent. This recent attack has left the average user vulnerable. Of course this leads to a problem for Google and the other engines who can’t protect their users.
- Problems for Search Engines: This affects Google and the other engines in more than one way. First and foremost they lose the trust of their users. If a users machine is infected by clicking on a Google result they are not going to trust Google anymore. In some cases users may actually believe Google is behind the malware themselves. While this is not true less experienced Internet users may not understand how this works and blame Google. Either way many users will not trust Google to provide them with safe results. Another problem that Google has is on the hackers injecting spam into other sites. The recent hacking of the Al Gore site highlights this issue. Al Gore’s site is a trusted site and hackers installed links to other sites, which are totally irrelevant. These links from Al Gore’s sites are trusted by Google and the sites that were linked to shot up to the top of Google’s results. This compromises the relevance of the Google index and when users find results that are not relevant or simply not as good as the other engines Google can lose more users. Again, like the malware issue Google users lose trust in the results and move on to other engines who provide better results or don’t infect their computers with malware.
- Problems for Site Owners & Bloggers: Site Owners and bloggers are hurt because when hackers get into their sites and set up links to spammy sites they may face a Google penalty or complete ban. Since these links are hidden and being sent to bad neighborhoods they are violating more than one Google Guideline. Search Engine Roundtable reported on a site that met this fate and thankfully was placed back in good standing. Not only is there an issue with penalties, many sites were hacked to include malware and spyware and if they are not banned Google could put the “This site may harm your computer” disclaimer in the SERP snippet and keep users from clicking on it.
These hacks and malware attacks affect everyone’s Internet experience
Hackers and spammers who engage in these tactics can negatively affect everyone’s Internet experience and can seriously damage the reputations of the hacked site owners as well as the search engines who are being spammed and displaying malware containing results. Make sure that you keep an eye on your logs and watch for any weird outbound links or activity. If you find a site that is installing malware use the new malware reporting form in Google so they can clean up their index.
Here are a few links that highlight the latest attacks.
- November 26, 2007: BREAKING: Massive amounts of malware redirects in searches
- November 27, 2007: Update: Subverted search sites lead to massive malware attack in progress
- November 28, 2007: Google expunges malware sites from search results
- November 28, 2007: Google’s Malware Warnings Not Working?
- November 28, 2007: Al Gore’s Site Hacked
- November 29, 2007: Google Announces Malicious Software Form
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