Cybercriminals love taking advantage of current events and other trends that influence what people search for online – and that includes the holiday season.
For example, over the Thanksgiving weekend, web security firm Websense found that 41% of Thanksgiving-related searches returned links containing script injections in the top results.
That technique allows hackers to use vulnerabilities in plug-ins such as Flash and Adobe Acrobat to install malware on the victim’s computer.
The searches that led browsers to malware included seemingly innocuous phrases such as “American Thanksgiving menu,” “American Thanksgiving songs” and “Thanksgiving facts quiz.”
It’s worth passing along a warning about careful web browsing to the users in your company. Many of them may be under the false impression that it’s only the unsavory parts of the web, such as those devoted to pornography and illegal downloads, that are prone to malware attacks.