If I asked you to name the most dangerous behavior you could engage in over the Internet, what would you say?
Blindly opening email attachments from strangers? Downloading pirated software? Downloading movies and music through peer-to-peer networks?
While those activities certainly are risky, there is one Internet activity that is far and away the most hazardous to your computer — and everybody does it: searching the Web.
A recent study of computer infections discovered that a shocking 40 percent of them were the direct result of the consumer visiting a malicious site that had been found using a popular search term on well-known search engine sites such as Google or Bing. The term for this kind of attack is search engine poisoning, or SEO poisoning. Opening email attachments, widely considered to be the most dangerous thing you can do on your computer, came in at a distant second, accounting for just 12 percent of infections.
SEO poisoning works like this: The bad guys set up a themed "bait" site using terms that are popular or trendy and likely to show up in search engine results — for example, "Justin Bieber." When the unsuspecting user searches for "Justin Bieber," there’s a good chance the bait site will be listed among the other legitimate results. If the victim clicks on the poisoned result, they often reach a site designed to gather their financial information, trick them into thinking they have a virus (and offer to fix it for a fee) or get them to download malware, among other things.
According to Blue Coat, a security device manufacturer, 1 in 142 searches last year led to a malicious link. Web security firm Symantec says that as many as 1 in 3 search results are poisoned, and on some days, 80 percent of Web searches are dangerous. That means that on a page of 10 results, eight of them could infect your computer if you click on them. Hazardous indeed!
Earlier this year when the movie "The Hunger Games" came out, bait sites immediately sprang up luring searchers with false claims that they could download the movie for free or view risqué pictures of the stars. Top searches that were guaranteed to contain poisoned results were "Hunger Games Free Movie Download" and "Hunger Games Full Movie Torrent." Likewise, in 2011, when it was announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan, bait sites quickly sprang up, claiming to have photos or videos from the SEAL team’s helmet cams. These sites were all loaded with viruses ready to infect anyone who visited them.
What can you do to reduce the chances of being lured to a malicious site by a poisoned search result? The good news is that Google, Bing and other search providers aggressively hunt for bait sites and can flag them for removal or pop a warning in your browser if you click on a site they think might be malicious. Pay attention to those warnings, as they are usually spot-on. Look at the description text that accompanies the search result — on most bait sites it’s unintelligible gobbledygook or very poorly formed sentences. Also, make sure your computer has good anti-virus protection installed and is receiving regular updates. Some browsers, such as Chrome, allow you to "preview" a site before you actually go to it, and you can sometimes spot a bait site that way.
But the best defense is to remain alert when you are online, don’t fall for offers that seem too good to be true, and click only on search results leading to well-known, trusted sites.
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Cybersecurity expert Beau Monday is the information security officer at Hawaiian Telcom. Reach him at Beau.Monday@hawaiiantel.com.
