Google Trend Exploited By Hackers

Criminals have once again found a new way to trick net users to load dangerous malware tells security company Webroot in its Threat Advisory. This time Google Trend service is used to reach the target. Google Trend is a service that lists the day's most frequently searched topics.

According to Webroot criminals check some top story of the day using Google Trends and then copy the topic to their fake blogs. Into these blogs they insert links that appear to be pointing to topic related videos. That way criminals can attract users to visit the site and it raises higher in the search engine results. When user tries to watch video behind the link the site tells that to see a video a codec must be installed. This codec is actually malware.

Anything new there? Well, yes and no. The codec trick itself is old one but exploiting Google Trends is a new thing which unfortunately raises amount of users who end up to these malicious sites.

Webroot gives 5 step recommendations to users to prevent this kind of malware attack. Those are:

1. Always have a current version of antispyware, antivirus and firewall product
2. Never download free product or purchase them from unknown Web sites and vendors, or peer to peer networks
3. Download videos and other multimedia files only from known and trusted Web sites or blogs
4. Make sure the computer is up-to-date by always installing the latest Microsoft or Apple security updates and
5. Use a credit card that has sufficient fraud protection when shopping and never use a debit card online.