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Hackers Exploit Websites To Give Them Excellent SEO Before Deploying Malware – Slashdot

schwit1 shares a report from ZDNet: Cyberattackers have turned to search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to deploy malware payloads to as many victims as possible. According to Sophos, the so-called search engine “deoptimization” method includes both SEO tricks and the abuse of human psychology to push websites that have been compromised up Google’s rankings. SEO optimization is used by webmasters to legitimately increase their website’s exposure on search engines such as Google or Bing. However, Sophos says that threat actors are now tampering with the content management systems (CMS) of websites to serve financial malware, exploit tools, and ransomware.

In a blog post on Monday, the cybersecurity team said the technique, dubbed “Gootloader,” involves deployment of the infection framework for the Gootkit Remote Access Trojan (RAT) which also delivers a variety of other malware payloads. The use of SEO as a technique to deploy Gootkit RAT is not a small operation. The researchers estimate that a network of servers — 400, if not more — must be maintained at any given time for success. While it isn’t known if a particular exploit is used to compromise these domains in the first place, the researchers say that CMSs running the backend of websites could have been hijacked via malware, stolen credentials, or brute-force attacks.

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