by SEO Consultant
R. Falconer
Growth of the number of video search results in Google's Universal Search can be hugely beneficial to websites and provides a richer array of media to the average user. Unfortunately, criminals have been taking advantage of an increase in the use of video on the web, using fake video pages as a way of loading malware onto Google Video users' computers.R. Falconer
Since the growth of the use of video on the web Google (followed by other search engines) has increased the number of video results on the first page of its search results. When these results were rolled out, Google's YouTube and Google Video sites were the only two sites that appeared. Google has opened this up gradually and now a whole host of sites regularly appear on the first page of search results and within the dedicated Google Video search engine.
A search on Google for "soccer skills" gives four of the top five results as videos with the top two video results coming from Metacafe.com - one of the sites that has grown hugely as a product of these results. Myriad niche video upload sites have sprung up as a result of the popularity of video on line. Videojug.com specialises in "how to" videos, taking advantage of an increase in "how to" search queries. Teacher Tube allows the upload of instructional videos and TheJesusTV is "an alternative media sharing website for Christians..."
Google also now shows results for sites who host video content on their own domains and this can be a great source of traffic for some. Video sitemaps can also be submitted to search engines by sites, providing detailed information about a site's videos wherever they are on the web, be it YouTube, MetaCafe or TheJesusTV.
That someone would exploit video in a malicious way was inevitable. Criminal elements recently took advantage of the familiarity with finding video through search results by using Blackhat SEO techniques and some old fashioned deception.
According to Trend Micro 400,000 search queries in Google Video (not to be confused with Google's Universal results) showed results pointing to malicious fake video pages that were optimised to show in the results. Once on the page, the user was asked to download an update to their Flash player in order to view the video. Accepting the download actually lead to a worm (WORM_AQPLAY.A) being installed onto the user's computer.
When viewing the pages without being directed from Google Video, the worm was not offered. This made the pages difficult to detect and concentrated the scam on users who were actively looking for video pages and were therefore more likely to be duped.
The fact that this emerged around the same time as Google blacklisting every site on the web may or may not be connected.
A Google spokesperson has stated that it has taken measures to prevent similar Google Video situations in future.
"Google works hard to protect our users from malware, and using Google Video, or any Google product, to serve or host malware is a violation of our product policies," he said.
