Buying Software Online Is Getting More And More Risky

Researchers observed widespread search-result poisoning where links for popular software in Google search results redirected users to fake online stores and ultimately to malware (notably fake antivirus pages); the proportion of malicious redirects rose from under 1% in January to about 8% in May, with multiple malicious and hijacked domains identified (examples include adremekj2.cz.cc, drxjgjd.co.cc, and hijacked subdomains of mit.edu, harvard.edu, stanford.edu, and ign.com).