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By John Goff
There's a sucker born every minute. And it seems a lot of them love surfing the Web.
A worrisome new study by McAfee found that scammers are turning to search engine technology to attract a steady supply of marks. Apparently, hackers are identifying search terms that deliver the largest audiences—and then embedding their pernicous code in these often legitimate sites. In some cases, McAfee found that scammers simply boost the search engine results of their own fraudulent sites. The cybercriminals then glean credit card numbers and personally indentifiable information from visitors.
Either way, web surfers are at risk. According to McAfee, the single most dangerous search term is 'word unscrambler,' with an average risk of more than 16%. In other words, out of 250 search results across a number of pages, close to 40 hits took visitors to risky web sights. Worse, McAfee found that the maximum risk for 'word unscrambler' (that is, a single results page with the greatest danger) was around 50%. In other words, up to half of the hits for the term "word unscrambler' on that one page led users to bogus or infected sites.
Given the growth of smart phones and netbooks—and the number of parents buying their kids smartphones and netbooks—it's not overly surprising that search terms targeting kids dominated the results. Indeed, anything to do with music can be a bad bet. Indeed, the keywords 'lyrics,' 'free music downloads' and 'free music' made the list of the top ten riskiest search results, reported McAfee.
McAfee searched for more than 2,600 popular keywords, examining more than 413,000 unique URLs. The security specialist found that the average risk level of all results pages was just 1.7%. In other words, only four out out 250 hits were dangerous. The average for the most dangerous pages, however, was much higher. For those pages, a list of 250 results produce about 25 risky hits.
Beyond music-related terms, the worst maximum risk profile was for searches that contained the word "free." That category generated a 21.3% maximum risk profile. "Work from home" was another high-risk rubrick--understandable given the current unemployment rates.
In fact, it appears that hackers are keeping tabs on current events in a bid to attract the most victims. For example, three popular female celebrities generated high risk profiles: Angelina Jolie (8.3% maximum risk) Oprah Winfrey (10%) and Beyonce Knowles (10%). But searches for Zuma Rossdale, the daughter of trendy rockers Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani, can be as risky as 25%
Corporates were not immune from these cyber deceptions, either. Both 'Lowes' and Costco' made McAfee's list of the top 50 most dangerous search terms.
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