They're calling it “SEO poisoning.” We're calling it pretty damned funny.
Someone hacked Microsoft's Safety and Security Center, the company’s “one-stop hub for computer safety, housing information on how to create strong passwords, avoid viruses and malware and protect yourself from Internet scams,” and redirected some of the links to “hardcore, seriously hardcore porn sites.”
But not only that! Some of the sites lead to pretty serious malware.
The issue was noticed late Friday. To protect their users, Microsoft took the site down Saturday morning and issued an apology. They're still giving no word on how this happened but the site was back up and running by yesterday afternoon.
“This is crafty,” Alex Eckelberry, the general manager of GFI Software's security group and the CEO of Sunbelt Software, said in an interview. “This isn't normal search poisoning. It's poisoning the results with actual searches. Users were getting back a prior search as a search result.”
How does Eckelberry think it happened? “This isn't a slam on Microsoft; they have some very, very sharp guys on security,” he commented. “But by trying to make [the Safety & Security Center site] somewhat social, it blew up in their faces.”
We'll say.
Someone hacked Microsoft's Safety and Security Center, the company’s “one-stop hub for computer safety, housing information on how to create strong passwords, avoid viruses and malware and protect yourself from Internet scams,” and redirected some of the links to “hardcore, seriously hardcore porn sites.”
But not only that! Some of the sites lead to pretty serious malware.
The issue was noticed late Friday. To protect their users, Microsoft took the site down Saturday morning and issued an apology. They're still giving no word on how this happened but the site was back up and running by yesterday afternoon.
“This is crafty,” Alex Eckelberry, the general manager of GFI Software's security group and the CEO of Sunbelt Software, said in an interview. “This isn't normal search poisoning. It's poisoning the results with actual searches. Users were getting back a prior search as a search result.”
How does Eckelberry think it happened? “This isn't a slam on Microsoft; they have some very, very sharp guys on security,” he commented. “But by trying to make [the Safety & Security Center site] somewhat social, it blew up in their faces.”
We'll say.
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