400,000 Google Video Searches Are Polluted: Report

Feb 2, 2009 at 2:55pm ET by Matt McGee

400,000 search queries on Google Video lead to poisoned results and may lead users to download malicious software. That’s according to a Trend Micro blog post this weekend reported today by The Register.

Trend Micro believes this “blackhat SEO poisoning” comes from a group that maintains multiple domains with “keyword-riddled pages” that often appear on top of the search results. When users click through to one of these domains, the problems begin:

“… instead of legitimate videos researchers found some 400,000 queries returning video results that have a single redirection point, and one that eventually leads to malware download and execution.

Trend Micro detects the malicious executable as WORM_AQPLAY.A. This worm – file name FlashPlayer.v3.181.exe and from that alone one can already guess the social engineering strategy – spreads via removable and network drives when autorun is enabled. It masquerades as an Adobe Flash installer, which users who visit certain spoofed versions of video streaming websites are prompted to download and install.”

Trend Micro says only searchers coming from Google Video to these domains are prompted to download the malicious Flash installer file.


Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

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ONE COMMENT ON 400,000 Google Video Searches Are Polluted: Report

reelseo, February 2nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm ET:

Yup, this was covered earlier last week on several sites, including our site, ReelSEO – http://www.reelseo.com/google-video-blackhats/

What the heck is wrong with Google Video? Time for them to get their act together.


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