« Google AdWords Tests Campaign Template Feature For My Client Center Users | Main | AOL Launches New Money & Finance Site, Powered By Relegence Search Engine »

Nov. 28, 2007 at 8:57am Eastern by Barry Schwartz

Malware Hits Search Results -- Google's Malware Warnings Not Working?

Subverted search sites lead to massive malware attack in progress from ComputerWorld reports that Google, along with Yahoo, Live Search have been targeted in a massive attack that puts links leading to malware sites into top search results.

Alex Eckelberry, Sunbelt Software's CEO said "So far we've found 27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages. That's 40,000 possible pages." The pages are specifically being returned by search engines in their organic results (not the paid results). Eckelberry explains, "They get themselves on to Google, then redirect people to their malware pages."

The SunBelt Blog has screen captures of this issue happening in Google's organic results.

But doesn't Google have a malware filter tool? See our past articles:

• Google Steps Up Web Page Malware Notifications
• Google Search Results Now May Display Malware Warnings
• Google Webmaster Tools Adds Malware Review Form
• Matt Cutts On Appealing Google Malware Warnings

Google has now removed the result in SunBelt's example. But those results looked very similar to the Chinese Look-Alike Google Spam we reported from early September. But this can easily be a different issue.

For more coverage of this topic, check Techmeme.

Like The Story? Vote For It On Yahoo Buzz! Subscribe To Our Daily Search News Recap! Your Email: Send me the monthly search newsletter too! (Learn more about our newsletters and feeds)

Subscribe To Our Search Feed!

Share & Bookmark This Story!

By Barry Schwartz Permalink Jump To Comments See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, Legal: Security, SEO: Spamming, Search Features: Safety

Reader Comments