A recently observed Zeus Panda banking Trojan attack used poisoned Google search results for specific banking related keywords to infect users, Cisco Talos researchers warn.
As part of this attack, the actor behind Zeus Panda used Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make their malicious links more prevalent in the search results. By targeting financial-related keyword searches, the actor attempted to increase the efficiency of the attack through ensuring that the infected users are regularly using financial platforms.
“By leveraging compromised web servers, the attacker was able to ensure that their malicious results would be ranked highly within search engines, thus increasing the likelihood that they would be clicked on by potential victims,” Cisco reveals.
