Compromised websites focused on tomorrow’s midterm elections serve as the hunting ground for cybercriminals looking to take advantage of unsuspecting visitors.Compromised sites are being used to redirect visitors to webpages where scams, pornography, malware, and other undesirable content is promoted.
And the attackers are even more devious; their malicious code distinguishes between live users and crawlers (based on the user-agent HTTP header of the request), giving the crawlers appropriate political content and live users a series of redirects (to keep security crawlers from flagging the site as malicious) that eventually place them on the desired webpage.
This is just the latest example of SEO poisoning – attackers lever current trending topics, using this kind of attack relatively consistently.
Because of the tactics used, it’s impossible for organizations to rely on search engine results alone to keep users browsing to appropriate webpages. Security Awareness Training educates employees to recognize suspicious websites, redirects, and inappropriate content before clicking on malicious links and becoming a victim.
Find out how affordable new-school security awareness training is for your organization. Get a quote now.
