Security News > 2023 > January > Recent rise in SEO poisoning attacks compromise brand reputations

The researchers explain that attackers using search engine optimization poisoning are generally more successful "When they SEO poison the results of popular downloads associated with organizations that do not have extensive internal brand protection resources."

SEO poisoning attacks consist of altering search engines results so that the first advertised links actually lead to attacker controlled sites, generally to infect visitors with malware or to attract more people on ad fraud.

The zip files which are downloaded from Dropbox contain executable files.

Figure C. The second zip file, unknown to VirusTotal, might be similar, as the zip file has the same size and has been created five minutes after the first one.

The final file, downloaded from Discord, contains an ISO file that is probably also malicious.

As mentioned, SEO poisoning attackers usually choose to impersonate popular products or brands in order to run their malicious operations.

News URL

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/seo-poisoning-brand-reputation/