Individuals searching online to determine the legality of owning Bengal cats have found themselves victims of an unusual cyber attack. The cybersecurity firm SOPHOS has issued an urgent advisory on its website, cautioning users against entering a specific six-word query into their search engines.
Reports indicate that those who search for “Are Bengal Cats legal in Australia?” have had their personal information compromised after clicking on deceptive links that appear prominently in the search results. SOPHOS elaborated that victims are often lured into selecting harmful adware or links that masquerade as legitimate marketing or, in this instance, a genuine Google search.
Currently, these perilous links only manifest in search results when the term “Australia” is included, placing individuals in that region at heightened risk of an attack. When users click on what seems to be a legitimate search result, their personal information, including banking details, is stolen through a malicious program known as Gootloader. This program can also prevent users from accessing their own computers, according to SOPHOS.
Although the search term regarding Bengal cats may seem relatively obscure, the company asserts that this makes the hacking threat even more concerning, as individuals do not need to be searching for anything illicit to have their personal information compromised. SOPHOS warns that cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting benign Google searches through a method referred to as “SEO poisoning.”
