The world of cyber attacks has gotten really advanced in the recent past, so much so that an entire industry has formed around these malicious acts because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up improving the quality of these attacks and giving malicious actors numerous supplemental sources of income. The most popular of these services is called Black Hat SEO, and the companies offering it have managed to get phishing sites better SERP rankings than legitimate websites.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the tactics implemented by these Black Hat SEO companies are unethical at best, and illegal at worst. In spite of the fact that this is the case, their use of keyword stuffing and fake links that are paid are managing to successfully trick the algorithm into giving them better rankings. Search engines like Google try to mitigate this by swiftly removing domains that use such practices, but malicious actors have found a way around that.
They can very efficiently switch up their domain names and the temporary boost they get from their SEO rankings helps spread the phishing attacks they are trying to conduct. The scale with which Black Hat SEO is being performed is quite staggering, with one website having as many 177,105 spurious links that lead to it according to a security company by the name of Cybersixgill.
These malicious actors are often targeting company employees by using keywords that they might search for. Even though these sites don’t manage to stay up for very long, the massive number of links means that these malicious actors get a few victims with each domain and this adds up significantly over time.
Avoiding websites that you are not familiar with and seeing any forms that you are asked to fill out with skepticism can help protect you from these attacks. Companies are facing an increasing threat with phishing, since it can often lead to them losing access to official accounts.
Vector by roserodionova/freepik
Read next: How do browsers detect counterfeit websites and domain names? A complex solution to a simple problem
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the tactics implemented by these Black Hat SEO companies are unethical at best, and illegal at worst. In spite of the fact that this is the case, their use of keyword stuffing and fake links that are paid are managing to successfully trick the algorithm into giving them better rankings. Search engines like Google try to mitigate this by swiftly removing domains that use such practices, but malicious actors have found a way around that.
They can very efficiently switch up their domain names and the temporary boost they get from their SEO rankings helps spread the phishing attacks they are trying to conduct. The scale with which Black Hat SEO is being performed is quite staggering, with one website having as many 177,105 spurious links that lead to it according to a security company by the name of Cybersixgill.
These malicious actors are often targeting company employees by using keywords that they might search for. Even though these sites don’t manage to stay up for very long, the massive number of links means that these malicious actors get a few victims with each domain and this adds up significantly over time.
Avoiding websites that you are not familiar with and seeing any forms that you are asked to fill out with skepticism can help protect you from these attacks. Companies are facing an increasing threat with phishing, since it can often lead to them losing access to official accounts.
Read next: How do browsers detect counterfeit websites and domain names? A complex solution to a simple problem
