Hackers exploit McAfee false positive problem

Hackers are up at it again and blackhat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is again being employed to exploit the breaking news. This time hackers are exploiting an issue with McAfee’s anti-virus product that has caused thousands of computers around the world to reboot repeatedly. If you search McAfee issue, cybercriminals have managed to get poisoned webpages high in the search rankings.

Earlier, McAfee had released an update causing its anti-virus product to detect a genuine Windows file, svchost.exe, as “W32/Wecorl.a” which caused computers to reboot repeatedly. McAfee has already apologised and withdrawn the buggy update but malicious hackers continue to exploit this situation.

Clicking on the links listed in the search may infect your computer by fake anti-virus which attempts to trick you to provide your credit card details or install malicious software on your computer.

This is not the first time that the hackers have exploited such news. Few of the examples in the past were related to the news like “Michael Jackson Dead”, “Obama Nobel Peace Prize”, “Tsunami in Asia”, etc.

Search engines (like Google, Bing, etc) always do their bit to remove such malicious links as fast as they can. But as a user be aware that such breaking news are exploited and will be exploited in future as well. So it’s better to avoid visiting unknown websites!!