Another Example of the Prevalence of Rogue Antivirus

It's no secret that black hat search engine optimization is often used to attract people to nefarious websites. Often using a trending topic (a celebrity divorce, death or sex scandal), internet evildoers will use these techniques to push their websites to the top of the search results. When the unwitting user clicks on the webpage they're greeted by fake antivirus adverts which prompt them to buy tools that will remove the infections they're led to believe they have contracted.

As it turns out, purveyors of these fake AV products (which are often affiliate marketing schemes) are getting so expert at manipulating google that just yesterday they effectively turned google itself into a disseminator of malware.

As this Network World article noted:

On Tuesday, clicking on the illustration on Google's front page commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Esperanto's creator L. L. Zamenhof, generated an awful lot of malicious search results -- taking visitors to dodgy advertisements or pages that tried to trick visitors into thinking their computers were infected and paying for fake antivirus software.

These results remained steadily in the top 5 to 10 search results for people who clicked on the Google doodle link today,and often filled up about half of the first few pages of results, Michmerhuizen said.