Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, warns of a prominent threat to website owners, including small and medium-sized businesses: search engine optimization (SEO) spam and hidden links embedded on legitimate websites.
SEO is the practice of improving a website’s visibility in search engine results through ethical strategies like keyword optimization, high-quality content creation and building authoritative backlinks. However, malicious actors are exploiting this process by injecting hidden links on reputable sites to manipulate search rankings, often linking to illicit content such as pornography or gambling, jeopardizing businesses’ online presence and reputation. The consequences for affected websites are severe, including plummeting search rankings, eroded visitor trust and potential legal liability if linked to illegal content. The attackers’ goals may be to discredit certain websites or to channel traffic to certain portals.
Attackers embed hidden links on websites by exploiting compromised administrator accounts, outdated website content management system extensions (which were initially designed to enhance the functionality and features) or server weaknesses, allowing them to directly edit the site’s HTML code or inject malicious scripts. Security solutions may categorize such websites as prohibited and block traffic to them.
Popular blogs and forums are among the targets due to their high traffic, making them valuable for boosting attacker-controlled sites. Websites with less traffic are also vulnerable, as attackers exploit weaker security to inject these links, which can go unnoticed until traffic drops or search engines issue penalties.
“Kaspersky’s categorization engine constantly detects hidden links pointing to pornographic and gambling sites. SEO spam is a serious threat that can silently undermine a company’s digital credibility and financial stability. These hidden links not only exploit a website’s authority to boost illicit sites, but can also trigger harsh penalties from search engines and security solutions, devastating businesses that rely on online visibility. Proactive defense of the website admin panel and content management system is critical to staying ahead of these evolving attacks,” said Anna Larkina, Web Content and Privacy Analysis Expert at Kaspersky.
Kaspersky recommends regular audits of website source code for suspicious elements, using trusted tools such as Google Search Console or OpenLinkProfiler. Businesses should keep CMS platforms and plugins updated, enforce strong passwords with two-factor authentication and restrict admin panel access by IP address. Deploying web application firewalls and maintaining regular backups are also essential to prevent and recover from unauthorized changes.
