Winter Solstice themed SEO poisoning leads to malware
Any occasion seems to be good lately to launch a SEO poisoning campaign. Zscaler reports that searching for information about the Winter Solstice (21st of December) has been the latest subject whose search results have provided links to malicious sites rife with malware:
The third and fifth result are malicious links, but while the fifth is marked by Google as a site that may harm your computer, the only thing that can alert you to the malicious nature of the third is the string of words that don’t make a sensible sentence.
After you clicked on the link, you are redirected to a site where you are urged to download the “latest Flash Plugin version” so you can watch a video or malware disguised as a security software because your computer’s infected:
This last file in particular is hard to detect. According to Virus Total, only 4 anti-virus solutions detect it as malware.