SEO poisoning | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

ClickFix, FileFix, fake CAPTCHA — whatever you call it, attacks where users interact with malicious scripts in their web browser are a fast-growing source of security breaches.  ClickFix attacks prompt the user to solve some kind of problem or challenge in the browser — most commonly a CAPTCHA, but also things like fixing an error on a webpage.  The name is a little misleading, though — the key factor in the attack is that they trick users into running malicious commands on their device by copying malicious code from the page clipboard and running it locally. Examples of ClickFix lures used by attackers in the wild. ClickFix is known to be regularly used by the Interlock ransomware group and other prolific threat actors, including state-sponsored APTs. A number of recent public data breaches have been linked to ClickFix-style TTPs, such as Kettering Health, DaVita, City of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Centers (with many more breaches ...

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that it revoked more than 200 certificates used by a threat actor it tracks as Vanilla Tempest to fraudulently sign malicious binaries in ransomware attacks. The certificates were "used in fake Teams setup files to deliver the Oyster backdoor and ultimately deploy Rhysida ransomware," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a post shared on X. The tech giant said it disrupted the activity earlier this month after it was detected in late September 2025. In addition to revoking the certificates, its security solutions have been updated to flag the signatures associated with the fake setup files, Oyster backdoor, and Rhysida ransomware. Vanilla Tempest (formerly Storm-0832) is the name given to a financially motivated threat actor also called Vice Society and Vice Spider that's assessed to be active since at least July 2022, delivering various ransomware strains such as BlackCat, Quantum Locker, Zeppelin, and Rhysida over the year...

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign likely undertaken by a Chinese-speaking threat actor using a malware called BadIIS in attacks targeting East and Southeast Asia, particularly with a focus on Vietnam. The activity, dubbed Operation Rewrite , is being tracked by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 under the moniker CL-UNK-1037, where "CL" stands for cluster and "UNK" refers to unknown motivation. The threat actor has been found to share infrastructure and architectural overlaps with an entity referred to as Group 9 by ESET and DragonRank . "To perform SEO poisoning, attackers manipulate search engine results to trick people into visiting unexpected or unwanted websites (e.g., gambling and porn websites) for financial gain," security researcher Yoav Zemah said . "This attack used a malicious native Internet Information Services ( IIS ) module called BadIIS." BadIIS is designed to i...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that uses fake software sites to distribute malware. "The attackers manipulated search rankings with SEO plugins and registered lookalike domains that closely mimicked legitimate software sites," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Pei Han Liao said . "By using convincing language and small character substitutions, they tricked victims into visiting spoofed pages and downloading malware." The activity, which was discovered by the cybersecurity company in August 2025, leads to the deployment of malware families like HiddenGh0st and Winos (aka ValleyRAT), both of which are variants of a remote access trojan called Gh0st RAT. It's worth noting that the use of Winos has been attributed to a cybercrime group known as Silver Fox , which is also tracked as SwimSnake, The Great Thief of Valley (or Valley Thief), UTG-Q-1000, and Void Arachne. It's believed to be acti...

Cybersecurity researchers are drawing attention to a new campaign that's using legitimate generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered website building tools like DeepSite AI and BlackBox AI to create replica phishing pages mimicking Brazilian government agencies as part of a financially motivated campaign. The activity involves the creation of lookalike sites imitating Brazil's State Department of Traffic and Ministry of Education, which then trick unsuspecting users into making unwarranted payments through the country's PIX payment system, Zscaler ThreatLabz said. These fraudulent sites are artificially boosted using search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning techniques to enhance their visibility, thereby increasing the likelihood of success of the attack. "Source code analysis reveals signatures of generative AI tools, such as overly explanatory comments meant to guide developers, non-functional elements that would typically work on an authentic website, and...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a malicious campaign that leverages search engine optimization ( SEO ) poisoning techniques to deliver a known malware loader called Oyster (aka Broomstick or CleanUpLoader). The malvertising activity, per Arctic Wolf, promotes fake websites hosting trojanized versions of legitimate tools like PuTTY and WinSCP, aiming to trick software professionals searching for these programs into installing them instead. "Upon execution, a backdoor known as Oyster/Broomstick is installed," the company said in a brief published last week. "Persistence is established by creating a scheduled task that runs every three minutes, executing a malicious DLL (twain_96.dll) via rundll32.exe using the DllRegisterServer export, indicating the use of DLL registration as part of the persistence mechanism." The names of some of the bogus websites are listed below - updaterputty[.]com zephyrhype[.]com putty[.]run putty[.]bet, and puttyy[.]org...

Unknown threat actors have been distributing a trojanized version of SonicWall's SSL VPN NetExtender application to steal credentials from unsuspecting users who may have installed it. "NetExtender enables remote users to securely connect and run applications on the company network," SonicWall researcher Sravan Ganachari said . "Users can upload and download files, access network drives, and use other resources as if they were on the local network." The malicious payload delivered via the rogue VPN software has been codenamed SilentRoute by Microsoft, which detected the campaign along with the network security company. SonicWall said the malware-laced NetExtender impersonates the latest version of the software (10.3.2.27) and has been found to be distributed via a fake website that has since been taken down. The installer is digitally signed by CITYLIGHT MEDIA PRIVATE LIMITED." This suggests that the campaign is targeting users searching for NetExten...

Fake installers for popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools like OpenAI ChatGPT and InVideo AI are being used as lures to propagate various threats, such as the CyberLock and Lucky_Gh0$t ransomware families, and a new malware dubbed Numero. "CyberLock ransomware, developed using PowerShell, primarily focuses on encrypting specific files on the victim's system," Cisco Talos researcher Chetan Raghuprasad said in a report published today. "Lucky_Gh0$t ransomware is yet another variant of the Yashma ransomware, which is the sixth iteration of the Chaos ransomware series, featuring only minor modifications to the ransomware binary." Numero, on the other hand, is a destructive malware that impacts victims by manipulating the graphical user interface (GUI) components of their Windows operating system, thereby rendering the machines unusable. The cybersecurity company said the legitimate versions of the AI tools are popular in the business-to-business (B2B) sal...

Threat hunters have detailed an ongoing campaign that leverages a malware loader called MintsLoader to distribute secondary payloads such as the StealC information stealer and a legitimate open-source network computing platform called BOINC . "MintsLoader is a PowerShell based malware loader that has been seen delivered via spam emails with a link to Kongtuke/ClickFix pages or a JScript file," cybersecurity firm eSentire said in an analysis. The campaign has targeted electricity, oil and gas, and the legal services sectors in the United States and Europe, per the company, which detected the activity in early January 2025. The development comes amid a spike in malicious campaigns that are abusing fake CAPTCHA verification prompts to trick users into copying and executing PowerShell scripts to get around the checks, a technique that has come to be known ClickFix and KongTuke. "KongTuke involves an injected script that currently causes associated websites to displa...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malware called PLAYFULGHOST that comes with a wide range of information-gathering features like keylogging, screen capture, audio capture, remote shell, and file transfer/execution. The backdoor, according to Google's Mandiant Managed Defense team, shares functional overlaps with a known remote administration tool referred to as Gh0st RAT , which had its source code publicly leaked in 2008. PLAYFULGHOST's initial access pathways include the use of phishing emails bearing code of conduct-related lures or search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning techniques to distribute trojanized versions of legitimate VPN apps like LetsVPN. "In one phishing case, the infection begins by tricking the victim into opening a malicious RAR archive disguised as an image file by using a .jpg extension," the company said . "When extracted and executed by the victim, the archive drops a malicious Windows executable, which eventually dow...

A new phishing campaign is targeting e-commerce shoppers in Europe and the United States with bogus pages that mimic legitimate brands with the goal of stealing their personal information ahead of the Black Friday shopping season. "The campaign leveraged the heightened online shopping activity in November, the peak season for Black Friday discounts. The threat actor used fake discounted products as phishing lures to deceive victims into providing their Cardholder Data (CHD) and Sensitive Authentication Data (SAD) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII)," EclecticIQ said . The activity, first observed in early October 2024, has been attributed with high confidence to a Chinese financially motivated threat actor codenamed SilkSpecter. Some of the impersonated brands include IKEA, L.L.Bean, North Face, and Wayfare. The phishing domains have been found to use top-level domains (TLDs) such as .top, .shop, .store, and .vip, often typosquatting legitimate e-commerce organi...

In an unusually specific campaign, users searching about the legality of Bengal Cats in Australia are being targeted with the GootLoader malware. "In this case, we found the GootLoader actors using search results for information about a particular cat and a particular geography being used to deliver the payload: 'Are Bengal Cats legal in Australia?,'" Sophos researchers Trang Tang, Hikaru Koike, Asha Castle, and Sean Gallagher said in a report published last week. GootLoader , as the name implies, is a malware loader that's typically distributed using search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics for initial access. Specifically, the malware is deployed onto victim machines when searching for certain terms like legal documents and agreements on search engines like Google surface booby-trapped links pointing to compromised websites that host a ZIP archive containing a JavaScript payload. Once installed, it makes way for a second-stage malware, often an...

A new malware campaign is spoofing Palo Alto Networks' GlobalProtect VPN software to deliver a variant of the WikiLoader (aka WailingCrab) loader by means of a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. The malvertising activity, observed in June 2024, is a departure from previously observed tactics wherein the malware has been propagated via traditional phishing emails, Unit 42 researchers Mark Lim and Tom Marsden said . WikiLoader, first documented by Proofpoint in August 2023, has been attributed to a threat actor known as TA544, with the email attacks leveraging the malware to deploy Danabot and Ursnif. Then earlier this April, South Korean cybersecurity company AhnLab detailed an attack campaign that leveraged a trojanized version of a Notepad++ plugin as the distribution vector. That said, the loader for rent is suspected to be used by at least two initial access brokers (IABs), per Unit 42, stating the attack chains are characterized by tactics that allow it to e...

The malware known as GootLoader continues to be in active use by threat actors looking to deliver additional payloads to compromised hosts. "Updates to the GootLoader payload have resulted in several versions of GootLoader, with GootLoader 3 currently in active use," cybersecurity firm Cybereason said in an analysis published last week. "While some of the particulars of GootLoader payloads have changed over time, infection strategies and overall functionality remain similar to the malware's resurgence in 2020." GootLoader, a malware loader part of the Gootkit banking trojan, is linked to a threat actor named Hive0127 (aka UNC2565). It abuses JavaScript to download post-exploitation tools and is distributed via search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics. It typically serves as a conduit for delivering various payloads such as Cobalt Strike, Gootkit, IcedID, Kronos, REvil, and SystemBC. In recent months, the threat actors behind GootLoader have...

The loader-as-a-service (LaaS) known as FakeBat has become one of the most widespread loader malware families distributed using the drive-by download technique this year, findings from Sekoia reveal. "FakeBat primarily aims to download and execute the next-stage payload, such as IcedID , Lumma , RedLine , SmokeLoader , SectopRAT , and Ursnif ," the company said in a Tuesday analysis. Drive-by attacks entail the use of methods like search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, malvertising, and nefarious code injections into compromised sites to entice users into downloading bogus software installers or browser updates. The use of malware loaders over the past few years dovetails with the growing use of landing pages impersonating legitimate software websites by passing them off as legitimate installers. This ties into the larger aspect that phishing and social engineering remain one of the threat actors' main ways to acquire initial access. FakeBat , also known as Eu...