14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn that searching for terms related to the upcoming royal wedding carries a risk of scareware infection because the results are poisoned with malicious links.
The Royal Wedding of Prince William, the second in line of succession to the British Throne, and Kate Middleton, is scheduled to take place at Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011.
As it draws near, the event and related happenings are getting more and more attention from the media.
Security researchers from GFI Security warn that searching for recent news of a jelly bean resembling the face of Kate Middleton will lead users to a scareware application called XP Antispyware.
Meanwhile, experts from ESET warn that searching for keywords such as "middleton wedding dress idea" carries similar risks.
Search result poisoning is part of black hat SEO (BHSEO) campaigns and is a method used with great success to distribute scareware in recent years.
Google, the primary target of such attacks, has gotten better at detecting and cleaning the rogue results, but it's still not enough and the cyber crooks are constantly finding ways past its defences.
In addition, scareware pushers have expanded their attacks to other search engines as well, making the threat even more widespread.
The schemes rely on the existing PageRank of compromised legit websites to hijack results for certain terms. Trying to visit the rogue links will redirect users to pages displaying fake antivirus scans that warn them of non-existent infections on their computers.
The pages distribute fake security programs under the promise that they will fix the issues. However, after installation, the applications do nothing more than display more alerts and warnings.
The end goal is to scare users into buying licenses for the useless programs and expose their credit card details in the process.