Google's Top Search Result For 'Target' Was A Tech Support Scam

An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer:
Malicious ads displayed in Google search results for Target — the US retailer — redirected users to a tech support scam. The malvertising campaign was spotted on Friday by a US user who posted his observations to a StackExchange thread. The rogue ad appeared when users searched for the term “target,” right at the top of all search results, [and] used a feature of the Google Ads service that allows ad publishers to display a URL but redirect users to another link. For example, in the rogue ad, the displayed link was “target.com,” but users were redirected to “tech-supportcenter.us.” Surprisingly, this got past Google’s ad quality control service… The page users landed on was mimicking the style of Microsoft’s real website, but was urging users to call a phone number to remove a non-existent “HARDDISK_ROOTKIT_TROJAN_HUACK.EXE” file.

The article points out the same thing happen in February when Google’s top search result for Amazon was a spoof site with another tech support scam.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discuss&id=10698409&smallembed=1

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