Black-hat SEOs piggyback on McAfee slip-up

Stephen Withers
Friday, 23 April 2010 16:01

Business IT - Security

One of McAfee's rivals has warned people searching for information concerning that company's recent 'false positive' slip-up may be served with a dose of malware.

Earlier this week, McAfee released an updated definitions file to detect the wecorl.a malware, but in some situations it incorrectly reported the svchost.exe file as being infected, bringing systems to a halt.

Some high-profile customers were affected in Australia, including Commonwealth Bank, Coles, and Virgin Mobile.

Symantec has warned that search terms such as MaAfee, 5958 and DAT are returning results that can lead to malicious and fake-AV sites. Following these links can result in the installation of malware.

These black-hat SEO attacks merely introduce "another problem into a situation that is already bad and shows that these miscreants have no qualms whatsoever about how they go about making a quick buck whenever and however they can," said Symantec's Hon Hau.