SEO poisoning campaign ensares several thousand websites, security expert finds

Danielle Walker, Senior Reporter  December 09, 2014
 
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A security expert estimates that around 10,000 legitimate websites were impacted by the campaign.  A security expert found that several thousand legitimate websites have been compromised to improve the SEO of other web pages – a tactic that could result in targeted sites being demoted or even blacklisted by search engines.
The attack method, called SEO poisoning, was observed by Jay Wind, an Arlington, Va.-based webmaster who manages several non-profit and business sites. In September, he first stumbled across the issue after seeing numerous GoDaddy domains being targeted, but it appears that the longstanding issue is not just limited to GoDaddy sites.
This week, SCMagazine.com ran a Whois search on some of the impacted domains, and found that, in addition to GoDaddy sites, domains hosted by service providers Versaweb and CyrusOne also appeared to be impacted by the attacks, meaning the campaign appears to be a more widespread issue.
 
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