Tag Archive for: black hat

SEO Black Hat Techniques Are Changing

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There are a lot of standard black hat SEO methods that have been around for a while, but those that stray a little on the darker side of SEO keep busy.  There are several new tactics that these people are using.

As SEO becomes a more prominent form of marketing, black hat methods are also becoming more well-known.  The latest term for these techniques is “poisoning”, which I find appropriate.  These SEOs will put their poisoned links (which contain malware and installations of other nefarious elements) into various places where people will find them through either particular keywords or through social media.

As a lot of people are not aware that these attacks happen, they can often give away account information, trusting that the sites they are visiting are reliable.  These attacks come through Twitter and Facebook as well as through standard search engine results.

For more info on this, check out this article by Last Click News.

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iPad Announcement Prompting Black Hat SEO and Malware Attacks

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The iPad is the latest Apple news and it’s been getting a lot of attention.  Considering this, some not-so-nice SEOs are using the fresh keywords to do black hat SEO to infect computers across the globe with malware.  They’re targeting laterally related keywords such as “Apple Tablet” and “Apple iPad Rumor”.

Be cautious if you see some weird results when you do searches on these types of terms.  The eWeek Security Watch has more info on this.

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Brittany Murphy and… SEO?

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The tragic news of Brittany Murphy’s unexpected passing affected many.  However, there are some to whom this news affected in a different way – they saw a way to make a buck.

Personally, I think it’s rather sick, but there are some individuals who have taken this opportunity to take a hot news item and push spam and malware.  Quick dirty black-hat SEO methods can often get high results quickly, but then are found by Google and taken offline.  The issue is that even the short amount of time listings like these stay online can be enough to infect several machines.

Newer black-hat SEO attacks use news events to get attention to sites that pose as news sites, but act only to infect machines with malware schemes.  Be cautious when visiting unknown news sites that are “reporting” on hot news items.

The Tech Herald has more information on this particular attack, and F-Secure has more information on the specific malware details.

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