Threat Actors Manipulate Search Results to Direct Users to Malicious Websites

The digital landscape has become increasingly perilous as cybercriminals develop sophisticated methods to manipulate search engine results, directing unsuspecting users to malicious websites. ESET researchers identified a sophisticated example of this threat in 2021, uncovering a previously undocumented server-side trojan that manipulated search engine results by hijacking the reputation of compromised websites. The attack chain typically begins when a user enters a query into a search engine, receiving results that include either manipulated organic listings or malicious advertisements. When users click on compromised search results, they’re directed to websites that meticulously mimic legitimate services, complete with official-looking logos, layouts, and verification badges. The former involves manipulating search engine algorithms to artificially boost a site’s ranking, while the latter places dangerous content at the top of search results through paid advertising platforms. Both methods capitalize on users’ tendency to trust prominent search results, creating a perfect storm of vulnerability in our everyday online activities. Financial services represent particularly high-value targets, with ESET researchers in Latin America documenting scams impersonating Mastercard through ads that appeared prominently in search results. This dangerous trend exploits our habitual trust in search engines, where users often click on top results without scrutinizing their legitimacy. These attacks primarily operate through two vectors: SEO poisoning (also known as black hat SEO) and malicious search advertisements. Cyber Security News is a Dedicated News Platform For Cyber News, Cyber Attack News, Hacking News & Vulnerability Analysis. The infrastructure often involves multiple redirect chains, with initial landing pages appearing benign before funneling users to endpoints where credentials or financial information are harvested.

This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Sun, 13 Apr 2025 14:30:09 +0000

Cyber News related to Threat Actors Manipulate Search Results to Direct Users to Malicious Websites

Staying ahead of threat actors in the age of AI - At the same time, it is also important for us to understand how AI can be potentially misused in the hands of threat actors. In collaboration with OpenAI, today we are publishing research on emerging threats in the age of AI, focusing on identified ...
1 year ago Microsoft.com Kimsuky

What is SEO Poisoning Attack? - Search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning is a type of cyber attack that infiltrates search results. It consists of malicious search engine results created by an attacker attempting to redirect someone to malicious or vulnerable webpages. It is a ...
2 years ago Heimdalsecurity.com

Threat Actors Manipulate Search Results to Direct Users to Malicious Websites - The digital landscape has become increasingly perilous as cybercriminals develop sophisticated methods to manipulate search engine results, directing unsuspecting users to malicious websites. ESET researchers identified a sophisticated example of ...
1 day ago Cybersecuritynews.com

30 Best Cyber Security Search Engines - In recent years, several search engines have been developed that are primarily focused on cyber security. In today's era, having all the necessary resources and search tools related to cyber security is crucial to staying protected against emerging ...
9 months ago Cybersecuritynews.com

TeamCity Intrusion Saga: APT29 Suspected Among the Attackers Exploiting CVE-2023-42793 - As part of this analysis, we look at threat actor TTPs employed throughout the intrusion and how they were identified and pieced together by the FortiGuard IR team. The following section of this report focuses on the activities of one of these threat ...
1 year ago Feeds.fortinet.com CVE-2023-42793 APT29

Operation Morpheus took down 593 Cobalt Strike servers used by threat actors - Threat actors actively exploit D-Link DIR-859 router flaw CVE-2024-0769. Experts released PoC exploit code for a critical bug in Progress Telerik Report Servers. Threat actors may have exploited a zero-day in older iPhones, Apple warns. Nation-state ...
9 months ago Securityaffairs.com CVE-2024-0769 CVE-2022-38028 CVE-2023-49103 CVE-2023-46747 CVE-2023-46748 CVE-2023-4966 APT28

Threat actors misuse OAuth applications to automate financially driven attacks - Threat actors are misusing OAuth applications as an automation tool in financially motivated attacks. Threat actors compromise user accounts to create, modify, and grant high privileges to OAuth applications that they can misuse to hide malicious ...
1 year ago Microsoft.com

Frustration grows over Google's AI Overviews feature, how to disable - Since Google enabled its AI-powered search feature, many people have tried and failed to disable the often incorrect AI Overviews feature in regular search results. When you're signed into Google and search for general topics like how to install one ...
10 months ago Bleepingcomputer.com

Criminal IP and Quad9 Collaborate to Exchange Domain and IP Threat Intelligence - Criminal IP, a renowned Cyber Threat Intelligence search engine developed by AI SPERA, has recently signed a technology partnership to exchange threat intelligence data based on domains and potentially on the IP address to protect users by blocking ...
11 months ago Hackread.com

Financially motivated threat actors misusing App Installer - Since mid-November 2023, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors, including financially motivated actors like Storm-0569, Storm-1113, Sangria Tempest, and Storm-1674, utilizing the ms-appinstaller URI scheme to distribute malware. In ...
1 year ago Microsoft.com Black Basta

18 Best Web Filtering Solutions - 2025 - Pros Cons Comprehensive content filtering.Cost can be high for full features.Malware and threat protection.Hardware-based solutions may require additional infrastructure.Easy to deploy and manage.Configuration complexity for advanced ...
1 month ago Cybersecuritynews.com

What Is Cyber Threat Hunting? - Cyber threat hunting involves proactively searching for threats on an organization's network that are unknown to traditional cybersecurity solutions. A recent report from Armis found that cyber attack attempts increased by 104% in 2023, underscoring ...
1 year ago Techrepublic.com

Buzzing on Christmas Eve: Trigona Ransomware in 3 Hours - In late December 2022, we observed threat actors exploiting a publicly exposed Remote Desktop Protocol host, leading to data exfiltration and the deployment of Trigona ransomware. On Christmas Eve, within just three hours of gaining initial access, ...
1 year ago Thedfirreport.com Trigona

How to Overcome the Most Common Challenges with Threat Intelligence - Today's typical approach to threat intelligence isn't putting organizations in a place to do that. Instead, many threat intelligence tools are delivering too much uncurated and irrelevant information that arrives too late to act upon. Organizations ...
1 year ago Cyberdefensemagazine.com Hunters

New Tool Set Found Used Against Organizations in the Middle East, Africa and the US - Unit 42 researchers observed a series of apparently related attacks against organizations in the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. We will discuss a set of tools used in the course of the attacks that reveal clues about the threat actors' activity. We ...
1 year ago Unit42.paloaltonetworks.com

What Is Threat Modeling? - Threat modeling emerges as a pivotal process in this landscape, offering a structured approach to identify, assess, and address potential security threats. Threat Modeling Adoption and Implementation The successful adoption of threat modeling within ...
1 year ago Feeds.dzone.com

Top 7 Cyber Threat Hunting Tools for 2024 - Cyber threat hunting is a proactive security measure taken to detect and neutralize potential threats on a network before they cause significant damage. To seek out this type of threat, security professionals use cyber threat-hunting tools. With ...
1 year ago Techrepublic.com

Companies Must Strengthen Cyber Defense in Face of Shifting Threat Actor Strategies - Critical for organizations to understand attackers' tactics, techniques, and procedures. The 2023 mid-year cyber threat report card portends an ominous outlook with staggering data including the fact that 332 million cryptojacking attacks were ...
1 year ago Cyberdefensemagazine.com

The Surge of FakeBat Malware in Search-Based Malvertising Campaigns - In recent months, cybersecurity researchers have observed a concerning surge in search-based malvertising campaigns, with documented incidents nearly doubling compared to previous periods. Amidst this uptick in online threats, one particular malware ...
1 year ago Cysecurity.news

How to Use Threat Intelligence Feeds for SOC/DFIR Teams - Threat intelligence feeds provide real-time updates on indicators of compromise, such as malicious IPs and URLs. Security systems can then ingest these IOCs to identify and block potential threats, which essentially grants organizations immunity to ...
10 months ago Cybersecuritynews.com

Windows Incident Response: Human Behavior In Digital Forensics, pt III - Digital forensics can provide us insight into a threat actor's sophistication and situational awareness, which can, in turn, help us understand their intent. Observing the threat actor's actions helps us understand not just their intent, but what ...
1 year ago Windowsir.blogspot.com

CISA: AWS, Microsoft 365 Accounts Under Active 'Androxgh0st' Attack - The FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have issued an alert about a malware campaign targeting Apache webservers and websites using the popular Laravel Web application framework, leveraging known bugs for initial ...
1 year ago Darkreading.com CVE-2017-9841 CVE-2021-41773

IRGC-Affiliated Cyber Actors Exploit PLCs in Multiple Sectors, Including U.S. Water and Wastewater Systems Facilities - SUMMARY. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Israel National Cyber Directorate-hereafter referred to as "The authoring agencies"-are ...
1 year ago Cisa.gov