After his accident on Friday, there has been a good deal of interest in Golf phenomenon Tiger Woods. Never ones to miss out on a search trend, criminals are spiking the search results related to Woods, his wife Elin, and New York party girl Rachel Uchitel, with malicious links.
Tiger Woods accident sparking BlackHat SEO scams. (IMG: Flickr/Keith Allison)
If you follow the tabloids, then Tiger didn’t have an accident. The popular rumor is that Elin went nuts and beat him, because he has been seen around town with Rachel Uchitel. In his attempt to escape the beat down, he crashed the SUV.
According to the rumors, Elin was seen with a golf club, and Tiger’s injuries were not the type to come from a car crash. However, Elin doesn’t come off as a Chris Brown type, and neither one of the Woods’ are talking to the press or police. The police are still talking to witnesses, and the odds are none of the domestic abuse rumors are likely to play out.
“As you all know, I had a single-car accident earlier this week, and sustained some injuries. I have some cuts, bruising and right now I'm pretty sore. This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I'm human and I'm not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn't happen again… Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded, and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible,” said Tiger in a statement on Sunday.
However, those malicious rumors are what fuels the BlackHat SEO being used to spread Malware. Users searching keywords related to Woods will discover several sites hosting “videos” that will offer details about the accident, Rachel Uchitel and Tiger’s relationship, as well as other related and mixed news.
The videos, as expected for anyone following the malicious SEO trends, will only “work” if you download and install a “required plugin”. This plugin is a Trojan, and according to Sophos it is used to send Spam from infected systems.
This is not the first time breaking or popular news has been exploited. Serena Williams was a target in September, and over the summer the death of pop legend Michael Jackson saw BlackHat SEO attacks.
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