FriendshipGarden

GardenTalker · Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 2:37 pm Post subject: Hackers hijack web search results

Thank goodness, there`s enough problems on the net without this one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7118452.stm

Hackers hijack web search results

The booby-trapped sites have been removed from Google's index

A huge campaign to poison web searches and trick people into visiting malicious websites has been thwarted.

The booby-trapped websites came up in search results for search terms such as "Christmas gifts" and "hospice".

Windows users falling for the trick risked having their machine hijacked and personal information plundered.

The criminals poisoned search results using thousands of domains set up to convince search index software they were serious sources of information.

Innocent victim

While computer security researchers have seen small-scale attempts to subvert search results before now, the sheer scale of this attack dwarfed all others.

"This was fairly epic," said Alex Eckelberry, head of Sunbelt Software - one of the firms that uncovered the attack. cont..