Tax Day Freebies Posted by Sean @ 15:22 GMT

Google's Online Security Blog had a very interesting post yesterday regarding fake antivirus. Google has been working to protect their users since March 2007, when they first discovered fake AV. (We, and other security vendors, have been writing about the issue of rogues since at least July 2006.)



Google performed a 13 month study and "uncovered over 11,000 domains involved in Fake AV distribution — or, roughly 15% of the [overall] malware domains" that were detected during the period.



Hopefully the research will be useful in combating the fake antivirus Search Engine Optimization (SEO) attacks that currently plague Google's real-time results.



Today, for example, is April 15th, tax day in the USA. So what happens if you search for "tax day freebies 2010" using Google?



Yep. You'll find rogues and fake antivirus attacks on the first page of results.



Here's a short flash video we made demonstrating the issue:



"tax day freebies 2010"



Generally, clicking on any of the links in Google Trends is an easy way to locate fake antivirus.



We haven't done a 13 month study, but Bing's results appear to be safer.













