Cyber criminals certainly leave no stone unturned. They have now started to use our own traffic impetus against us by monitoring Google Trend during peak sear hours. What are the looking for? Webroot issued an advisory recently stating that hackers are gathering the top news stories, videos and searches from Google Trends and posting on their own faux blogs. The Director of Threat Research at Webroot, Paul Piccard stated:

“These highly relevant news stories and videos are being posted to the hackers’ fake blogs to increase the site’s Google search rankings.”

Webroot went on to state that “These fraudulent blogs contain several video links about the news story for which the users were originally searching. Once a user clicks on one of the video links, they are prompted to download a video codec that downloads a rogue antispyware program designed to goad the user into purchasing an illegitimate program that may put their personal information and data at even greater risk.”

The motivation behind all this is not surprising. There’s a lot of money to be made and according to Dancho Danchev, an independent security consultant and cyber threat analyst, ten or more malware blogs can start to appear in the top ten result pages in less than an hour. “Upon clicking the link, the user is exposed to the typical ActiveX Object Error message that is attempting to trick them into installing TrojanDownloader:Win32/Zlob.AMV with 10 out of 36 AV scanners currently detecting it (27.78%).” stated Danchev.

Granted, black hat is nothing new. What is unique is the fact that by using this ongoing research technique cyber criminals actually have a better chance of increasing their traffic and getting users to purchase their malware-ridden products.

How can you protect yourself? Webroot gives these five tips:

1. Always have a current version of antispyware, antivirus and firewall product;

2. Never download free product or purchase them from unknown Web sites and vendors, or peer
to peer networks;

3. Download videos and other multimedia files only from known and trusted Web sites or blogs;

4. Make sure the computer is up-to-date by always installing the latest Microsoft or Apple
security updates; and,

5. Use a credit card that has sufficient fraud protection when shopping and never use a debit
card online.

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In case you have been hiding in a cave for the last few weeks and don’t read newspapers or watch the tv, You would know that Microsoft made a bid for the once mighty search engine Yahoo in a deal worth over 44 Billion dollars! After roughly a week of deliberation on the offer Yahoo has now officially rejected the offer saying that it substantially undervalues the company and is a predatory move designed to take advantage of the current share price slump.

Analysts and search guru’s have been a buzz over the possible implications a merged Yahoo and MSN would have for the broader search community and i have just one comment to make regarding this. Any kind of serious competition to Googles almost total market dominance has to be a good thing, regardless of who the player that consolidates the number two search spot ends up being.

More recent reports have come in that News Corp is supposedly in talks to merge its myspace and fox web properties along with some private cash on the side as well with Yahoo in order to gain a 20% stake in the company which would value Yahoo at roughly 50 billion total.

No doubt there will be more updates to come as the battle for Yahoo continues.

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Microsoft made some leadership changes on Thursday, promoting more than a dozen executives and confirming the departure or pending departure of three top executives.

As expected, Windows VP Mike Sievert, online services senior VP Steven Berkowitz, and Windows Mobile head Pieter Knook are all leaving the company. Knook is heading to a new post at Vodafone, Sievert plans to start his own company, and Berkowitz will stay at Microsoft through August, as his duties transition to other executives.

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