Google to Combat Malicious Sites

Last month, news about malicious sites taking advantage of Google's PageRank to stay on top of the search results, drawing unsuspecting users into their malware-ridden sites. Google creates an online form so users can report any malicious sites they may see.


Google's Response to Malware Sites
News leaked out about malicious sites using a technique called Google Bombing and spamdexing to stay on top of the search results, last month. Malware sites will likely to occur on the top of the search results, drawing unsuspecting victims into their malware-ridden sites, by exploiting Google's PageRank system. Once the user enters the site, it will try to install a number of malwares on the system.

Security vendor Sunbelt Software said hackers appeared to be using various tricks to ensure their malicious sites appear high in Google's search results. Sunbelt said it turned up 27 different domains hosting malware, each with up to 1,499 malicious pages, or some 40,000 pages in total.

Google's initial response was to purge from its index these sites, although Google has not confirmed that this happened. At least, your search result will now less likely contain a malicious website. It was the first search engine to act on this situation. After all, it is its technology being used to bait users. Yahoo and Windows Live Search has not yet reported to the said breakout.

Currently, we know of hundreds of thousands of Web sites that attempt to infect people's computers with malware. Unfortunately, we also know that there are more malware sites out there," Google's Ian Fette wrote in the company's security blog.

To protect online users even more, Google launched an online form so ordinary web users can report any website they suspect that contain malicious code. It contains a simple form that lets users enter the URL of the site and additional information. It also features a CAPTCHA to prevent automated bots from reporting sites automatically.