Netskope published a research which found that phishing downloads saw a sharp increase of 450% over the past 12 months, fueled by attackers using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve the ranking of malicious PDF files on popular search engines, including Google and Bing.
The top web referrer categories contained some categories traditionally associated with malware, particularly shareware/freeware, but were dominated by more unconventional categories. The ascension of the use of search engines to deliver malware over the past 12 months provides insight into how adept some attackers have become at SEO. Malware downloads referred by search engines were predominantly malicious PDF files, including many malicious fake CAPTCHAs that redirected users to phishing, spam, scam, and malware websites.
The report also found that most malware over the past 12 months was downloaded from within the same region as its victim, a growing trend that points to the increasing sophistication of cybercriminals, which more frequently stage malware to avoid geofencing filters and other traditional prevention measures.
The findings reveal that attackers tend to target victims located in a specific region with malware hosted within the same region. In most regions, the plurality of malware downloads originated from the same region as the victim. This is especially true for North America, where 84% of all malware downloads by victims in North America were downloaded from websites...
Read Full Story: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/05/11/malicious-pdf-search-engines/
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