According to comScore’s monthly search reports, American internet users conduct an average of 16 billion searches over the course of a month. This makes search engines a popular vehicle for cybercriminals to attack their unknowing victims.
Barracuda Labs, an internet security firm, recently reported that most of these attacks occur on Google. Barracuda found the search giant facilitates 69 percent of total malware attacks, while competing portals Yahoo, Bing and Twitter account for less than one-third combined.
"Our study shows that attackers have serious efforts devoted towards getting in front of the billions of eyeballs that are using search engines everyday and the millions of users that are connecting on social networks like Twitter," says Paul Judge, chief research officer and vice president at Barracuda Networks.
Many cybercriminals used popular events to trick victims into visiting their sites (26 percent), while 23 percent piggybacked off of entertainment topics.
The majority of hackers chose Google because of how many consumers use it. According to comScore, the search giant serves 62 percent of all web-driven queries.
Yeah, it makes sense spammers and virus spreaders would start using SEO to get you on your site. Google sometimes does warn you when you’re on a sketchy site. But in the end, the best you can do is have a good anti-virus protection, and just stick to the sites that you know.
This makes total sense if you think about it. People who are creating malware want others to think it’s a perfectly legit site. They get their site in Google – My bet is that the majority of folks searching on Google don’t realize that Google doesn’t make or endorse those results. It’s hard to know what you’re clicking on before you get there. Google does sometimes warn about sites that are suspicious… so that’s a step in the right direction.
that’s why i don’t use google anymore. bing is so much better!
Hackers/Malware creators are smart creatures. It’s interesting that they focus so much on scamming people and stealing information. I’m sure it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for them to create a legitimate product or internet-based business.
It will be interesting to see what the search engines (all – not just Google) do in the future to combat this problem. With the competition nearing, I definitely think this will become important.
I like Barracuda. That’s the filter we use at work. they probably know what their talking about.