Haiti earthquake themed blackhat SEO campaigns serving scareware
Cybercriminals quickly mobilized following the news of a massive earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday, by introducing several hundred compromised domains embedded with bogus blackhat seo (search engine optimization) content related to Red Cross donations and general Haiti earthquake relief information.
From SANS Internet Storm Center
Published: 2010-01-14,
Last Updated: 2010-01-14 18:45:02 UTC
by Bojan Zdrnja (Version: 1)
Just when you think they couldn’t possibly go any lower … The bad guys behind the Rogue AV scam (see my old diary at http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=7144 about Rogue AV) are heavily using SEO techniques to make links to their sites appear high on search engines. For example, when using Google to search for “haiti earthquake donation” top 6 hits (!) lead to compromised web sites which in turn check the referrer (they verify if you are coming from a search engine) and, if that is true, redirect you to another web site.
At the moment they are redirecting to scan-now24.com which appears to be taken down.
As posted on numerous places yesterday – if you plan on donating be very careful about sites you visit.
–
Bojan
INFIGO IS
More information can be found at McAfee
FakeAlert-PC-Care
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_253419.htm
UPDATE:
How to Help Haiti: Donate Online Or Via Text
Donating is even as easy as just texting a few numbers.
- According to the Red Cross’ Twitter page, you can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross
relief efforts. You can also donate online to Red Cross’ International Response Fund. - Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean’s grassroots organization is accepting donations via text. By texting “Yele” to 501501, you’ll automatically be donating $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund. Check out Yele.org for more information.
- The French organization Doctors Without Borders has been doing work in Haiti for years. Donate at DoctorsWithoutBorders.org.
Check out NPR.org and CBSnews.com for more listings.
Update: Don’t send money or even click on links unless you know the organization is legit. The FBI issued a list of guidelines to use before you send anyone money.
