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Re: [News] [Rival] Hackers hijack web search results

____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 04 December 2007 16:44 : \____

> The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> This story from the things that make one go "eeee-yuck" department:
>> 
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7118452.stm
>> 
>>     Hackers hijack web search results
>> 
>>     A huge campaign to poison web searches and trick people
>>     into visiting malicious websites has been thwarted.
>> 
>> (hopefully!)
>> 
>>     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.
>> 
>>     [...]
>> 
>>     [Raimund Genes, chief technology officer at Trend
>>     Micro] said the booby-trapped websites discovered
>>     by Trend Micro tried to exploit several different
>>     vulnerabilities in Microsoft's web browser. The sites
>>     also attempted to stop the malicious software being
>>     spotted by intermittently scrambling the package before
>>     it downloads.
>> 
>> [end excerpt]
>> 
>> --
>> #191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Linux.  An OS which actually, unlike certain other offerings, works.
>> 
> 
> The risks you run by running Windows on machines which are connected to
> the internet are grave indeed.

The symptoms described above are familiar. In the search engines newsgroups,
every now and then you have people starting a thread about how Google
is 'broken'. It later turns out that they just need to scan and cleanse their
broken [w|W]indows. Do you know how time consuming these things can be? They
are also common. The time wasted costs:

1. The search engines, which need to cope with lost customers
2. The advertisers, whose placements are hijacked and misused
2. The end user, which needs to call in an 'expert' to clean the [w|W]indows.

If only you could measure the amount of money (and pain) spent due to Windows
problems...

-- 
                ~~ Best of wishes

Roy S. Schestowitz      |    "In hell, treason is the work of angels"
http://Schestowitz.com  | Free as in Free Beer |  PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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      http://iuron.com - semantic search engine project initiative

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