Here at Sucuri we handle countless cases of SEO spam. This malware involves a website being compromised in order to spread (mostly pharmaceutical) advertisements by linking visitors to unwanted websites and stuffing spam keywords into the site. These links and keywords help the spam websites to rank higher in search engines like Google, sending evenRead […]
Tag Archives: spam
Common Website Security Terminology Defined
If you want to keep your website safe, it is important to understand the terminology used to describe the causes and effects of hacks. Software vulnerabilities and access control issues are two of the main causes of website infections, and in this post we will define some of the terminology used to describe them. WeRead […]
Analyzing a Facebook Clickbait Worm
Here at Sucuri we suspect everything, especially when your friends start to share content written in another language with clickbait headlines. If you are not familiar with the term, clickbait is when web content is created in a way that psychologically exploits the reader’s curiosity using compelling headlines. When someone clicks on the article toRead […]
How Social Media Blacklisting Happens
In today’s world, we are all browsing websites online and sharing content on a multitude of social media platforms every day. Worldwide social media users exceeded 2 billion back in August 2014, with an adoption rate unlike anything we have seen in history. Social media continues to grow around the world, with active user accountsRead […]
My Website Was Blacklisted By Google and Distributing Email Spam
Being blacklisted is one of the worst things that can happen to a website. The public shame coming from every visitor being stopped by the Big Red Warning page can literally destroy any online business, I am speaking from personal experience before joining the Sucuri team. When a website is blacklisted, users are unable toRead […]
Bogus Mobile-Shortcuts WordPress Plugin Injects SEO Spam
Here at Sucuri we see countless cases of SEO spam where a website is compromised in order to spread pharmaceutical advertisements or backlinks to sites selling luxury goods. Most of the time this involves injecting hundreds of spam links into the site’s database but in this case a deceptive, fake plugin called mobile-shortcuts was able […]
SPAM Hack Targets WordPress Core Install Directories
Do you run your website on WordPress? Have you checked the integrity of your core install lately for SPAM like “Google Pharmacy” stores or other fake stores? We have been tracking and analyzing a growing trend in SEO Spam (a.k.a., Search Engine Poisoning (SEP)) attacks in which thousands of compromised WordPress websites are being used […]
Not Just Pills or Payday Loans, It’s Essay SEO SPAM!
Remember back in school or college when you had to write pages and pages of long essays, but had no time to write them? Or maybe you were just too lazy? Yeah, good times. Well, it seems like some companies are trying to end this problem. They are offering services where clients pay them to […]
Heuristics and Rules: Why We Built a New Old WAF
We just rolled out an update to CloudFlare’s Web Application Firewall (WAF). Previously, CloudFlare’s WAF has received criticism from people who have tested it and found that it didn’t behave as traditional WAFs are expected to. That contrasted with the real world experience of users who saw our WAF virtually eliminate actual web threats. Seemingly […]
