In its latest Cybercrime Intelligence Report, Finjan shows how rogueware affiliate networks use SEO techniques to distribute their rogue Anti-Virus Software for profit
Farnborough, United Kingdom, 23rd March 2009 – Finjan Inc., a leader in secure web gateway products and the provider of a unified web security solution for the enterprise market, today announced that its Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC) managed to research one of the rogueware affiliate networks, where members make $ 10,800 a day. In the first issue of its Cybercrime Intelligence Report for 2009, Finjan shows how the rogueware was distributed using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Cybercriminals used SEO to optimize the distribution of their rogueware. Typos and misspelled keywords (such as “obbama” and liscense”) as well as trendy keywords taken from Google Trends system were abused to show compromised websites as top search results. Subsequently, the traffic volume to the compromised websites increased significantly luring masses of potential buyers to the rogueware offering.
The Cybercrime Intelligence Report covers the following:
- Cybercriminals are professionally organized and operate affiliate networks to boost their malware and rogueware distribution
- To promote their rogueware, they compromise legitimate websites by injecting SEO targeted pages which include repetitive popular search keywords with minor typos
- Search engines indexed these injected pages and display them as top search results
- This SEO targeted technique has proven to be very effective and yielded almost half a million Google searches to compromised sites, according to statistics found on the criminal’s server during the research
- 1.8M unique users were redirected to the rogue Anti-Virus software during 16 consecutive days
- Members of the affiliate network were rewarded for each successful redirection with 9.6 cents “a piece”, which totals $ 172,800 or $ 10,800 per day
The report further details how the cybercriminals created “doorways” to redirect users searching the web. The research is described in Finjan’s first Cybercrime Intelligence Report released today.
To download the report, please visit www.finjan.com/cybercrime_intelligence
Finjan MCRC specializes in the detection, analysis and research of web threats, including Crimeware, Web 2.0 attacks, Trojans and other forms of malware. Our goal is to be steps ahead of hackers and cybercriminals, who are attempting to exploit flaws in computer platforms and applications for their profit. In order to protect our customers from the next Crimeware wave and emerging malware and attack vectors, Finjan MCRC is a driving force behind the development of Finjan's next generation of security technologies used in our unified Secure Web Gateway solutions. For more information please also visit our info center and blog.
Secure Gateway provides organizations with a unified web security solution combining productivity, liability and bandwidth control via URL categorization, content caching and applications control technologies. Crimeware, malware and data leakage are proactively prevented via patented active real-time content inspection technologies and optional anti-virus modules. Powerful central management enables intuitive task-based policy management, excellent drill-down reporting capabilities and easy directory integration for all network implementation options. By integrating several security engines in a single dedicated appliance, Finjan’s comprehensive and integrated web security solution enables quick deployment, simplified management and reduction of costs. Business benefits include real-time web security (no patches or updates needed), lower total cost of ownership (TCO), cost savings in administration efforts, lower maintenance costs, and reduction in loss of productivity. Finjan's security solutions have received industry awards and recognition from leading analyst houses and publications, including Gartner, IDC, Butler Group, SC Magazine, eWEEK, CRN, ITPro, PCPro, ITWeek, Network Computing, and Information Security. With Finjan’s award-winning and widely used solutions, businesses can focus on implementing web strategies to realize their full organizational and commercial potential. For more information about Finjan, please visit: www.finjan.com.
Neil Stinchcombe, Eskenzi PR
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