p2pnet.net News:- Fraudsters hoping to steal money intended for www.chinacharity.cn, which was collecting donations for tsunami victims, manipulated Google page rankings so their fake phishing site was higher than the Chinese charity’s official www.chinacharity.cn.net page.

Criminals used it to try to steal money intended for the relief project.

Ben Guthrie, product marketing manager at Trend Micro, said although the crooks fraudsters tricked Google, it wasn’t the fault of Google or any other search engine, states Silicon.com.

“This is more indicative of a wider trend we have seen in the security industry where these types of attacks have gone from quite simplistic social engineering and are becoming a more thought out process as more organised criminal intent goes behind the planning and processes,” Guthrie is quoted as saying, going on that the fraudsters were “Google bombing”.

“When a site is Google-bombed, it means a number of websites link to the target website using a specific word or phrase - in this case ‘The China Charity Federation’,” says the story.

“When a user runs a search for that text, the site with the most links pointing at it will receive a better ranking from Google and so appear higher up the results page.”

The fake Chinese site has been closed down site has been closed down.

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See:-
tsunami victims - Porn site fighting back at Mydoom, Silicon.com, January 18, 2005

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