Using Google Search to Find Software Can Be Risky
Summary: Krebs on Security reports that malicious Google ads still appear above organic results for free software, citing a January 2024 search for FreeCAD that surfaced a sponsored link to freecad-us[.]org, a domain registered January 19, 2024. DomainTools found that domain is the newest of more than 200 similarly named domains at 93.190.143[.]252, a Netherlands host Sentinel One's Tom Hegel has tracked for over a year as part of a campaign he calls MalVirt, in which sites build search legitimacy and then swap in backdoored installers for a day or so.
What you should know: Hegel said the group now pays Google to land roughly one in every dozen searches rather than every search for a title like Autocad, and Google has blocked some domains at that host with Safe Browsing warnings while more than 240 others at the same address remain unblocked.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Malware
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