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Yesterday, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake smack northwest China's Qinghai Province. Hours after the tragedy, criminals spiked 18 of the top 20 search results for linked keywords, serving up Rogue anti-Virus applications.



According to state-run media reports out of China, 589 people are confirmed dead and 10,000 others are wounded. It is being reported that 60 of the lives lost are students, as schools in the area collapsed. After the initial quake, two aftershocks of 5.3 and 5.8 magnitude respectively, laid waste to the area breakup businesses and homes. Two years ago, a 7.9 magnitude quake hit the neighboring Sichuan province, resulting in 90,000 people departed or missing.

Capitalizing on the initial alarm and the need some have to get the most up-to-date information, criminals used Google Trends and related searches to poison the search results related to the quake. The methods used were so valuable that 18 of the top 20 searches were malicious.

The explore term used, “china earthquake 2010”, resulted in the huge poisoning. The next page of that search had nothing but malicious links