Black Hat SEO Campaign Poisons Justin Bieber Search Results

Security researchers from Panda have intercepted a new black hat search engine optimization (BHSEO) campaign, which poisons search results related to teen pop star Justin Bieber with malicious links.

Unlike most such attacks, which abuse current events and other subjects attracting considerable Internet search engine traffic, this campaign makes up shocking stories about the celebrity in order to lure users in.

According to the Panda researchers, all of the malicious search results begin with "Hot Video:" and are followed by phrases like "justin bieber takes estrogen pills", "justin bieber smoking weed", "justin bieber arrested", "justin bieber drinking problem", "justin bieber gender change operation" and even "justin bieber died".

The malicious search results take users to rogue pages, that falsely claim their computers are infected with malware in an attempt to get them to download and install a piece of scareware called My Security Engine.

Scareware is a collective name given to computer applications that pose as antivirus or security products and bombard users with bogus security warnings to scare them into paying useless license fees.

"These types of activities have become increasingly common. And any popular topic or issue is used by cyber-crooks to spread their creations.

"By positioning websites used to distribute malware among the first results in search engines, they can be sure that numerous Internet users will inadvertently download the fake antivirus," Luis Corrons, technical director at PandaLabs, explains.

Due to his large and young fan base, that is spread across the world, Justin Bieber has become a favorite theme for cybercriminals to use in their attacks.

For example, we recently reported about two separate Facebook survey scams, which used fake Bieber-related videos to trick users into allowing rogue applications to post from their profiles and spam their friends.