Beware: Malicious Home Depot ad gets top spot in Google Search

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Content source

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/beware-malicious-home-depot-ad-gets-top-spot-in-google-search/

A malicious Home Depot advertising campaign is redirect Google search visitors to tech support scams.
Malicious Google search ads are nothing new, with campaigns for Amazon Prime, PayPal, and eBay seen in the past. As these ads look like legitimate campaigns for the company, including showing their standard URL when you hover over them, it is common for people to be tricked into clicking on them.
Yesterday, BleepingComputer was notified by someone who fell for a malicious Home Depot advertisement currently displayed in the top spot of a Google search.
As a test, BleepingComputer searched for 'home depot' and was shown the malicious advertisement on our first try. Even worse, the ad is the top spot in the research result, making it more likely to be clicked.

To make it more difficult for security professionals to diagnose these ads, it appears that they only redirect to the scam once every 24 hours to the same IP address. Once a tech support scam is shown by clicking on the ad, subsequent clicks bring visitors to the legitimate site.
Unfortunately, many people, especially older people, who are not comfortable with computers, fall for these scams and call the number thinking it is a legitimate alert.
In some cases, the caller is tricked into allowing remote access to their computer where the scammers install programs like Lock My PC. The scammers then state that the caller must purchase a support package to unlock Windows.
To avoid these types of ads, users are advised to pay more attention to Google search results to not click on ads instead of the legitimate search page result for the company.

An adblocker would also help against this?
Don't see that ad when using uBlock Origin.

 

[plat]

Not in AdGuard/Windows either. Switched to Google search in Opera (very temporarily) and received the legitimate site's homepage at the top of the search results. Clicked around the site a little, nothing happened except some wood flooring and stuff.

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

So, the best defense is an adblocker.
Glad I installed the AdGuard or uBlock Origin extensions on all the pc's I manage or have setup for family and friends.