Microsoft’s Live Space Invaded By Pharma Link Spammers
Cybercrime affiliates of unlicensed pharmaceutical websites have begun moving on from attacks purely designed to poison Google search engine results, and are now targetting Microsoft’s web properties.
Search engine poisoners are actively making use of Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces blog hosting environment, net security firm eSoft reports. Miscreants are creating accounts which they use only to push links to the pharma-fraud sites. As a result the search engine ranking of these spamvertised sites is pushed up.
In addition, spam emails contain the URLs of fake blogs, from which surfers are redirected onto penis pill sites. The tactic is designed to evade spam filters that might already have blacklisted the fraudulent website.
The misuse of fake blogs on Live Spaces is a refinement of the well established practice of link spamming: posting “comments” on legitimate blogs that supply links to dodgy pharmaceutical websites and the like.
Attacks similar to the Live.com blogspamming for fraudulent pharmacy sites have also recently been thrown against both Yahoo and Blogger sites, eSoft adds. The security firm adds that the recent Google job spam scam also infiltrated Microsoft’s Life Space environment.
Whatever the distribution method, its clear these cybercriminals will continue to evolve new ways of advertising their bogus sites. An alert by eSoft containing screen shots of the fake pharma punting blogs that have begun affecting Live Spaces can be found here.
Credit: The Register, Threat Center Live Blog
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