You should be careful when you’re looking for information on the web. Not everything is as it seems, and even more when the Blackhat SEO techniques are so frequently used, which enable malicious websites to be positioned in search engines.
And why not using these techniques with the swine flu subject? Cyber-crooks are aware of this and have started using them. Just look what we found in Google: a search engine which offers information about the swine flu.
When clicking on the results displayed by the search engine, we are redirected to porn sites where we can view videos. However, to view a video we are required to install the last version of a player.
Actually, the file is not a player but an adware program which has been detected as Adware/WebMediaPlayer.
UPDATE:
We’ve tried other searches with this malicious engine.
On the one hand, we’ve tried with words related to antivirus solutions, like “Spyware remover” and different results have been displayed:
When accessing some of them, we’ve been redirected to a website that simulates a fake system scan and warns us that our computer is infected. The purpose of this is to offer us a solution (which is actually false).
On the other hand, we’ve tried with other text strings, like celebrities (Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie…), mortages, jobs and we’ve been redirected to porn websites as those we’ve previously mentioned when we talked about the swine flu.
We’ll continue researching this and keep you informed if we find anything new about this.
Panda Security specializes in the development of endpoint security products and is part of the WatchGuard portfolio of IT security solutions. Initially focused on the development of antivirus software, the company has since expanded its line of business to advanced cyber-security services with technology for preventing cyber-crime.
