Kaspersky , a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, warns of a prominent threat to website owners, including small and medium-sized businesses: search engine optimisation SEO spam and hidden links embedded on legitimate websites.
SEO is the practice of improving a websites visibility in search engine results through ethical strategies like keyword optimisation, high-quality content creation and building authoritative backlinks. However, malicious actors are exploiting this process by injecting hidden links on reputable sites to manipulate search rankings, often linking to illicit content such as pornography or gambling, jeopardising businesses online presence and reputation. The consequences for affected websites are severe, including plummeting search rankings, eroded visitor trust and potential legal liability if linked to illegal content. The attackers goals may be to discredit certain websites or to channel traffic to certain portals.
Attackers embed hidden links on websites by exploiting compromised administrator accounts, outdated website content management system extensions which were initially designed to enhance the functionality and features or server weaknesses, allowing them to directly edit the sites HTML code or inject malicious scripts. Security solutions may categorise such websites as prohibited and block traffic to them.
