Way back three years ago in 2007, the popular Los Angeles-based web hosting provider as well as domain name registrar Dreamhost had experienced a greatly damaging online attack.
However, it was not the usual assault that is initiated by the famous harmful zombie botnets.
According to the security experts who did a thorough investigation during that period of time, the malicious activity was termed to be as the “Search Engine Optimization” hack or simply SEO hacking.
There is a specific process that is involved in this kind of detrimental online activity, which affected not only Dreamhost but also other large online services.
Based on the reports, the specific links were incorporated straight into the files that were originally stored within the server. It was also discovered through careful observations that the vicious online crooks actually follow a certain concrete pattern whenever they set off the attack. It was said that documents, which are labeled as “index.html” or “index.php”, have a harmful link affixed at its end point.
A specific script is included most of the time at the last part after right after all the other scripts of the affected file.
According to the previous reports from IT experts, the detected script began from the base of a certain individual’s user account on the web server.
This script was then found to have descended four more levels into the account. It was proven that the script had become very dangerous because there were just too many sites which were hosted by that single server. Hence, all the websites that were under the web server were influenced by the “Search Engine Optimization” hacking incident. Based on the studies made by the experienced IT professionals, the links appeared as if they were simple Cialis spam. This proved that the online criminals really did their best in order to strengthen their attack through SEO hacking.
Also, the crooks carried out the assault with that kind of intensity just to have a “head on” with the system being attacked. Scan your site now and see if you are vulnerable.