Hacker is getting smarter using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for fishing attack

Happy Thanksgiving holidays and happy shopping for everyone. If you shop on line by doing Google Search. You will need to be extra careful these days.

According to EWeek, the hacker is now using SEO to promote malicious website into the top of Google or other Search engine's list. According to E-Week and I quoted below

" Attackers have set their sights on holiday shoppers searching for leaked Black Friday ads, creating malicious sites that appear on search engine result pages, according to a Nov. 18 alert by IT security firm SonicWall. Called SEO poisoning, hackers create these pages that Google and other search engines pick up thinking they are legitimate, and return them when users type in the search terms.

Security experts at SonicWall UTM Research discovered "polluted" results appearing in search engine results for holiday shopping-related terms in advance of Black Friday sales, the company said. These links take users to a malicious site that tricks users into downloading malware. The terms include "Walmart Black Friday Sales 2010," "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday," according to researchers.

PandaLabs, Panda Security's anti-malware laboratory, is advising holiday shoppers to be extra wary when shopping online this holiday season. The company noted most of the malware it sees today is specifically built for extracting credit card information, Social Security numbers and other data, which can be used to facilitate identity theft. In fact, 66 percent of the threats in PandaLabs' malware database are Trojans that specialize in sensitive data extraction.

"Cyber-criminals know this Friday and Monday are two of the biggest shopping days of the year, and Americans are going to be sharing tons of sensitive data online during this period," said Sean-Paul Correll, threat researcher at PandaLabs. "It's more important than ever for shoppers to follow best practices to avoid infecting their computers or turning over their private information into dangerous hands."

There is also another report on hacker use recent Royal wedding news to trick the end user to download a so called "Anti-Virus" scan software, and if the user download this kind of software. 

So, becareful.