The launch of iPhone MMS services by AT&T has brought a huge number of scareware vendors out of the woodwork, making a shambles of searches which involve the terms MMS and iPhone.

Internet criminals have begun to dominate the search returns when the terms MMS and iPhone are used together in a search. At this point, as many as the top six returns from such a search lead to sites with malicious intent, according to a ComputerWorld article. These sites want users to download what appear to be harmful software being marketed as protective Windows security programs. These programs, rather than serving any useful purposes, repeatedly pop up warning windows until users pay a fifty dollar fee to turn the popups off.

Stephan Chenette, the manager of security research at Websense, says, “Up to the top six results for search phrases about iPhone and SMS are poisoned. This obviously has to do with the iPhone’s new MMS feature.” … The hosts involved were registered just three or four days ago.” The speed at which these sites and malicious offers popped up show the rapidity with which criminals can begin to cause gullible internet users serious problems.

Chenette feels that it is much too easy for unethical Web denizens to pollute the online world with malicious software, saying, “They have millions of bots at their fingertips,” he said, “and with that control, they can sway the results of any search engine at any time.” This latest scareware campaign was obviously timed to coincide with the introduction of MMS on the iPhone, which seems to be a successful tactic.

In fact, Chenette says,”This isn’t going away, it’s too successful of a tactic. [Attackers] are taking the way that engines are populating their results and using it to their advantage. There’s nothing search engines can really do about it unless they redesigned how they create results from the ground up.” We therefore seem to be in for a slew of similar malware campaigns, aimed at specific SEO-spiked search terms. It is a most unwelcome extension to our spam-filled on-line lives, and another situation in which we seem to have little in the way of defenses.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 6:14 pm under Hacks, Internet, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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