14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn that Google Images search results for Mono Lake, the home of a newly discovered bacteria that could change scientific perceptions of how life evolves, have been poisoned with malicious links.
Located in Mono County, California, Mono Lake is 760,000 years old and is known for its high salt and alkalinity levels.
It has recently been in the news due to a new strain of bacterium, dubbed GFAJ-1, that was discovered living in it by a research team led by NASA astrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon.
GFAJ-1 is scientifically important because in the absence of phosphorus, belived to be one of life's building blocks, it can incorporate arsenic into its DNA and can thrive on it.
This is the first and only organism known to do this and could alter previous perceptions of what life requires to evolve.
It also means that places previously dismissed as inhospitable to life, could now be reconsidered. This increases the chances of extraterrestrial life forms existing, although, much different from the ones we know.
With all the media attention given to this new discovery, it’s understandable that a fair number of people would go online and search for images of Mono Lake in order to see where this organism lives.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals are always around to profit from topics that draw a considerable interest from the general public.
Security researchers from GFI Software (formerly Sunbelt) warn that some Mono Lake images results might lead to scareware distribution sites.
For example, Firefox users landing on such a site would see a fake “What’s New” page that normally appears after the browser is updated
This page claims that a new version of Flash Player is available and provides a link to it. However, the file served for download is actually a fake antivirus application.
Such programs are known as scareware or roguware and their purpose is to scare users into paying money for useless license keys.
They achieve this by displaying bogus security warnings about fictitious threats allegedly found on their systems. Users are advised to keep their antivirus programs up to date and to reject any transfers initiated by websites without asking for permission first.