Jun
1
McAfee Report on the Most Dangerous Web Search Keywords
McAfee recently released a study of the riskiest search terms on the Internet. This report attempts to identify the keywords that hackers around the globe are targeting as points of entry for their malicious websites, viruses, and malware scripts. McAfee analyzed more than 2,600 keywords across five major search engines to determine which were the most likely to produce search results containing links to “risky” website.
According to McAfee, the riskiest set of keyword variations on the web is “screensavers”, with a maximum risk of 59.1 percent. That means 6 out of 10 search engine results point to sites containing viruses, malware, or harmful scripts. When looking at individual search terms in the United States, some of the most risky searches include “word unscrambler”, “lyrics”, and “myspace”, all with a 50 percent maximum risk in search results. The most dangerous categories worldwide include searches relating to “lyrics” or “free”.
When looking at the list of the top 50 riskiest search terms in the US, it is no surprise that references to pop culture and current news events dominate the list. Cybercriminals are becoming more and more savvy in their targeting techniques, often using blackhat search engine optimization strategies to get on page one of a Google search result for popular keywords. Increasingly, a hacker’s strategy involves targeting keywords with up-to-the-second relevancy. If the entire world is searching for “swine flu”, you can bet there is a hacker out there trying to get his site on page one of search results for that term.
So what does this report mean to you? As an Internet user, you are a step ahead if you realize that cybercriminals are very smart hackers that prey upon you through complex social engineering techniques. Many users do not expect malicious websites when searching for current news or sporting events, but cyber criminals are increasingly successful in targeting all popular keywords, no matter what they may be. It is in their best interest to target the largest audience of users as possible.
To protect yourself, always be wary of your search results on any search engine. To help you in picking out the risky sites from the legitimate ones, you can use a tool like AVG’s LinkScanner, which is a free download.
For more information on this McAfee search report, see their press release, or read the Most Dangerous Search Terms PDF.
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