Cinderella Story Leads to March Madness Malware

The first week of March Madness has brought about many compelling stories, with a good deal of upsets and bracket busters. The most newsworthy of these has been the University of Northern Iowa’s ousting of #1 overall seed Kansas. This ‘Cinderella’ story has deservedly gotten a great deal of press coverage. However, those looking for information on the web may get infected with malware rather than a great story.

The eSoft Threat Prevention Team has been tracking search results on the story, and the NCAA Basketball Tournament in general, uncovering a great number of poisoned search terms. Searches for UNI Basketball or star player Ali Farokhmanesh return dangerous results leading to malware.

7 out of the top 10 results for UNI Basketball link to malware including the second result. The rogue anti-virus payload has very low detection among anti-virus vendors.

eSoft proactively detects and blocks blackhat SEO and search attacks similar to these using its automated systems and in-depth web site analysis. Any sites found are flagged as Compromised or Malicious, protecting eSoft SiteFilter customers.