Cybercriminals will always find a way to attack, and recently a new way to infect a computer using browser ads has been discovered Google.
Based on the creation of fake pages and advertising so that the page appears in the first search results of the platform, the attackers intend to deceive users.
Several cases of this type of cyber attack are already known, with which criminals want a person to access a site and download software, which is actually a virus.
One of them is promotion OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)which is a live broadcast program on digital platforms such as Twitch, Facebook and YouTube. When users browse Google the app may appear as the first result of an ad from a fake site.
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Unknowingly, a person enters and downloads the program in .EXE file format, which is common for this type of process, but when cybercriminals install themselves, they manage to take control of some accounts such as social networks or cryptocurrency wallets and clone computer data
The scale of this attack affected an influential person from NFTs in Twitterwho downloaded and installed the app from a fake ad and was later alerted to the attack, but it was too late and his cryptocurrency account was taken over by someone else, losing his money and NFTs.
“My entire digital life was stolen last night. All my personal and professional accounts were hacked and used to harm others. And less importantly, I lost a life-changing amount of my net worth – Alex, as he’s known, said on his profile.
But this is not the only case known so far. As stated by users in reddit, when searching for graphics drivers AMD to download them Googlean ad for a fake page appeared in the first result.
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A situation that also happened with VLCa free media player developed by the VideoLAN Foundation that was embedded in a fake website, it was discovered Trend Microcalling this type of attack ‘Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning’.
“Search engine results can be contaminated to download malicious files by SEO poisoning, and legitimate tools can perform malicious behavior because they are misused,” the researchers commented.
As it is about paid content, the search engine positions the fake site above the official ones, which give guarantees that users can download programs without problems.
This situation should put users on alert, who should check very carefully where they are downloading software onto their computer. The best option is to avoid access through a search engine, if not manually type the link of the original brand page to avoid risk. In addition, companies usually do not advertise the download of their programs.
This measure must be reinforced by constantly updating computers and browsers so that they have appropriate defense tools and by continuously changing access passwords to other platforms.
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