Researchers Uncover “Haxor” SEO Poisoning Marketplace

Fortra’s FIRE team uncovered the HaxorSEO (HxSEO) marketplace that sells malicious backlinks placed on long-lived, compromised legitimate domains (via webshells and exploits) to improve search rankings for phishing and malware distribution pages; the service lists SEO metrics for effectiveness, offers links for about $6 each, and maintains large Google Sheets of available compromised sites, enabling attacks at scale while providers work on takedowns and user guidance is issued.