Earlier today I visited Bing and searched for google chrome. The results were accompanied by a handful of ads in prominent positions at the top and along the right side. Nothing unusual about that, except for two nearly identical ads that appeared side-by-side at the top of the list. Here’s what they looked like (I’ve obscured the URL names to make the test tougher).
One of those ads was legitimate, and the other led to a malware attack. Can you tell which was which?
Here’s the landing page for the first ad:
And here’s where clicking the second ad led:
If you look closely enough, you can probably figure out that the first site is Google’s legitimate Chrome download page and the second one is fake, but the differences are subtle. A nontechnical observer would have a very difficult time figuring out that one of those big blue Download Google Chrome buttons is the real deal and one is fake.
Rea more
