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The hallmark of this type of hacking is spammy pages that appear to be added to the site. These pages contain keyword-rich gibberish text, links, and images in order to manipulate search engines. For example, the hack creates pages like www.example.com/pf/download-2012-free-full-crack.html which contain gibberish content like below:

Cloaking

This hack often uses cloaking to avoid webmasters from detecting it. Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to webmasters, visitors, and search engines. For example, the webmaster of the site might be shown an empty or HTTP 404 page which would lead the webmaster to believe the hack is no longer present. However, users who visit the page from search results will still be redirected to spammy pages, and search engines that crawl the site will still be presented with gibberish content.

Monitoring your Site

Properly monitoring your site for hacking allows you to remedy the hack more quickly and minimize damage the hack might cause. There are several ways you can monitor your site for this particular hack.

Looking for a surge in website traffic

Because this hack creates many keyword heavy URLs that are crawled by search engines, check to see if there was any recent, unexpected surges in traffic. If you do see a surge, use the Search Analytics tool in Search Console to investigate whether or not hacked pages are the source of the unusual website traffic.

Tracking your site appearance in search results

Periodically checking how your site appears in search results is good practice for all webmasters. It also allows you to spot symptoms of hacking. You can check your site in Google by using the site: operator on your site (i.e. search for site:example.com). If you see any gibberish links associated with your site or a label that says “This site may be hacked.”, your site might have been compromised. 

Signing up for alerts from Google

We recommend you sign up for Search Console. In Search Console, you can check if Google has detected any hacked pages on your site by looking in the Manual Actions Viewer or Security Issues report. Search Console will also message you if Google has detected any hacked pages on your site.

Also, we recommend you set up Google Alerts for your site. Google Alerts will email you if Google finds new results for a search query. For example, you can set up a Google Alert for your site in conjunction with common spammy terms like [site:example.com cheap software]. If you receive an email that Google has returned a new query for that term, you should immediately check what pages on your site are triggering that alert.

Diagnosing your Site

Gathering tools that can help

In Search Console, you have access to the Fetch as Google tool in Search Console. The Fetch as Google tool allows you to see a page as Google sees it. This will help you to identify cloaked hacked pages. Additional tools from others, both paid and free, are listed in the appendix to this post.

Checking for hacked pages

If you’re not sure if there is hacked content on your site, the Google Hacked Troubleshooter can walk you through some basic checks. For this type of hack, you’ll want to perform a site: search on your site. Look for suspicious pages and URLs loaded with strange keywords in the search results. If you have a large number of pages on your site, you might need to try a more targeted query. Find common spam terms and append them to your site: search query like [site:example.com cheap software]. Try this with several spammy terms to see if any results show up.

Checking for cloaking on hacked pages

Because this type of hacking employs cloaking to prevent accurate detection, it’s very important that you use the Fetch as Google tool in Search Console to check the spammy pages you found in the previous step. Remember, cloaked pages can show you an HTTP 404 page that tricks you into thinking the hack is fixed even if the page is still live. You should also use Fetch as Google on your homepage as well. This type of hack often adds text or links to the homepage.

We hope this post has given you a better idea of how to identify and diagnose hacks that inject gibberish URLs on your site. Tune in next week where we’ll be explaining how to remove this hack from your site. Be sure to follow our social campaigns and share any tips or tricks you might have about staying safe on the web with the #NoHacked hashtag.

If you have any additional questions, you can post in the Webmaster Help Forums where a community of webmasters can help answer your questions. You can also join our Hangout on Air about Security on August 26.

Appendix

These are tools that scan your site and may be able to find problematic content. Other than VirusTotal, Google doesn’t run or support them.

Virus Total, Aw-snap.info, Sucuri Site Check, Wepawet: These are tools that may be able to scan your site for problematic content. Keep in mind that these scanners can’t guarantee that they will identify every type of problematic content.

Posted by Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist & Yuan Niu, Webspam Analyst

There was once a time when having a relatively strong password or answering a security question was a reasonable way to protect your online accounts. However, according to a study from Stop Badware, stolen credentials is a common way for hackers to compromise websites. Additionally, even reputable sites can fall victim to hacking, potentially exposing your personal data like passwords to attackers.

Fortunately, two-factor authentication can help you keep your accounts safer. Two-factor authentication relies on an additional source of verification, in conjunction with your password, to access your account. You might have used two-factor authentication before if you have ever been prompted for a code from your phone when logging into a social media site or from a chip card reader when logging into a bank account. Two-factor authentication makes it more difficult for someone to log into your account even if they have stolen your password.

As a website owner, you should enable two-factor authentication on your accounts where possible. A compromised account can cause you to lose important personal data and valuable reputation for your site. Two-factor authentication can give you the ease of mind that your accounts and data are safer. 

Google currently offers 2-Step Verification for all of its accounts, including accounts from Google Apps domains. You can use your phone, a hardware token like a Security Key, or the Google Authenticator app to verify your account. These options give you flexibility when traveling or when you don’t have access to the mobile network.

If your hosting provider, Content Management System (CMS), or any type of platform you use for managing your site doesn’t offer two-factor authentication, ask their customer support for an option to use two-factor authentication in the future.They can build two-factor authentication into their own platforms using Google’s open source code. If your platform or hoster doesn’t provide strong protection against unauthorized access consider hosting your content elsewhere. You can see a list of websites that support two-factor authentication, including what types of authentication options they offer, at https://twofactorauth.org/.

If you have any additional questions, you can post in the Webmaster Help Forums where a community of webmasters can help answer your questions. You can also join our Hangout on Air about Security on August 26.

Posted by: Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist & Yuan Niu, Webspam Analyst

If you’ve spent some time on the web, you have more than likely encountered some form of social engineering. Social engineering attempts to extract confidential information from you by manipulating or tricking you in some way.

Phishing

You might be familiar with phishing, one of the most common forms of social engineering. Phishing sites and emails mimic legitimate sites and trick you into entering confidential information like your username and password into these sites. A recent study from Google found that some phishing sites can trick victims 45% of the time! Once a phishing site has your information, the information will either be sold or be used to manipulate your accounts. the owners will either sell it or use it to manipulate your accounts.

Other Forms of Social Engineering 

As a site owner, phishing isn’t the only form of social engineering that you need to watch out for. One other form of social engineering comes from the software and tools used on your site. If you download or use any Content Management System (CMS), plug-ins, or add-ons, make sure that they come from reputable sources like directly from the developer’s site. Software from non-reputable sites can contain malicious exploits that allow hackers to gain access to your site.

For example, Webmaster Wanda was recently hired by Brandon’s Pet Palace to help create a site. After sketching some designs, Wanda starts compiling the software she needs to build the site. However, she finds out that Photo Frame Beautifier, one of her favorite plug-ins, has been taken off the official CMS plug-in site and that the developer has decided to stop supporting the plug-in. She does a quick search and finds a site that offers an archive of old plug-ins. She downloads the plug-in and uses it to finish the site. Two months later, a notification in Search Console notifies Wanda that her client’s site has been hacked. She quickly scrambles to fix the hacked content and finds the source of the compromise. It turns out the Photo Frame Beautifier plug-in was modified by a third party to allow malicious parties to access the site. She removed the plug-in, fixed the hacked content, secured her site from future attacks, and filed a reconsideration request in Search Console. As you can see, an inadvertent oversight by Wanda led to her client’s site being compromised.

Protecting Yourself from Social Engineering Attacks

Social engineering is effective because it’s not obvious that there’s something wrong with what you’re doing. However, there are a few basic things you can do protect yourself from social engineering.

• Stay vigilant: Whenever you enter confidential information online or install website software, have a healthy dose of skepticism. Check URLs to make sure you’re not typing confidential information into malicious sites. When installing website software make sure the software is coming from known, reputable sources like the developer’s site. 
• Use two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication like Google’s 2-Step Verification adds another layer of security that helps protect your account even if your password has been stolen. You should use two-factor authentication on all accounts where possible. We’ll be talking more in-depth next week about the benefits of two-factor authentication. 

Additional resources about social engineering:

Today, we’ll be continuing our #NoHacked campaign. We’ll be focusing on how to protect your site from hacking and give you better insight into how some of these hacking campaigns work. You can follow along with #NoHacked on Twitter and Google+. We’ll also be wrapping up with a Google Hangout focused on security where you can ask our security experts questions.

We’re kicking off the campaign with some basic tips on how to keep your site safe on the web.

1. Strengthen your account security

Creating a password that’s difficult to guess or crack is essential to protecting your site. For example, your password might contain a mixture of letters, numbers, symbols, or be a passphrase. Password length is important. The longer your password, the harder it will be to guess. There are many resources on the web that can test how strong your password is. Testing a similar password to yours (never enter your actual password on other sites) can give you an idea of how strong your password is.

Also, it’s important to avoid reusing passwords across services. Attackers often try known username and password combinations obtained from leaked password lists or hacked services to compromise as many accounts as possible.

You should also turn on 2-Factor Authentication for accounts that offer this service. This can greatly increase your account’s security and protect you from a variety of account attacks. We’ll be talking more about the benefits of 2-Factor Authentication in two weeks.

2. Keep your site’s software updated

One of the most common ways for a hacker to compromise your site is through insecure software on your site. Be sure to periodically check your site for any outdated software, especially updates that patch security holes. If you use a web server like Apache, nginx or commercial web server software, make sure you keep your web server software patched. If you use a Content Management System (CMS) or any plug-ins or add-ons on your site, make sure to keep these tools updated with new releases. Also, sign up to the security announcement lists for your web server software and your CMS if you use one. Consider completely removing any add-ons or software that you don’t need on your website — aside from creating possible risks, they also might slow down the performance of your site.

3. Research how your hosting provider handles security issues

Your hosting provider’s policy for security and cleaning up hacked sites is in an important factor to consider when choosing a hosting provider. If you use a hosting provider, contact them to see if they offer on-demand support to clean up site-specific problems. You can also check online reviews to see if they have a track record of helping users with compromised sites clean up their hacked content.

If you control your own server or use Virtual Private Server (VPS) services, make sure that you’re prepared to handle any security issues that might arise. Server administration is very complex, and one of the core tasks of a server administrator is making sure your web server and content management software is patched and up to date. If you don’t have a compelling reason to do your own server administration, you might find it well worth your while to see if your hosting provider offers a managed services option.

4. Use Google tools to stay informed of potential hacked content on your site

It’s important to have tools that can help you proactively monitor your site.The sooner you can find out about a compromise, the sooner you can work on fixing your site.

We recommend you sign up for Search Console if you haven’t already. Search Console is Google’s way of communicating with you about issues on your site including if we have detected hacked content. You can also set up Google Alerts on your site to notify you if there are any suspicious results for your site. For example, if you run a site selling pet accessories called www.example.com, you can set up an alert for [site:example.com cheap software] to alert you if any hacked content about cheap software suddenly starts appearing on your site. You can set up multiple alerts for your site for different spammy terms. If you’re unsure what spammy terms to use, you can use Google to search for common spammy terms.

We hope these tips will keep your site safe on the web. Be sure to follow our social campaigns and share any tips or tricks you might have about staying safe on the web with the #NoHacked hashtag.

If you have any additional questions, you can post in the Webmaster Help Forums where a community of webmasters can help answer your questions. You can also join our Hangout on Air about Security on August 26.

Posted by: Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist and Yuan Niu, Webspam Analyst