[Ads-l] Phrase: Pharma hack; also news about the QI website

Barretts Mail mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jul 12 18:21:02 UTC 2019


Sorry to hear about that attack. It never ends.

Anyone who has a website might want to look at Cloudflare.com <http://cloudflare.com/> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare>). They offer free accounts to protect against DDOS attacks, and they also speed up website response time by caching pages (a feature that should be turned off if you’re updating and want to make sure your update is going through).

Benjamin Barrett (he/his/him)
Formerly of Seattle, WA

> On 11 Jul 2019, at 20:43, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> The Quote Investigator website has been under attack by hackers
> (actually, almost all websites are under regular attack). If you have
> visited the QI website you may have seen strange links to websites
> selling tramadol, ambien, propecia, and other pharmaceuticals. These
> links were planted by hackers who were attempting to manipulate search
> engine rankings. This is called a "pharma hack". See below.
> 
> The website has been scrubbed, and security has been upgraded.
> Nevertheless, if you encounter anomalous content or strange behavior
> on the QI website please let me know.
> 
> Phrase: Pharma hack
> 
> Article: Cleaning the Wp-Page Pharma Hack in WordPress
> Date: September 6, 2016
> Author: Tony Perez
> https://blog.sucuri.net/2016/09/cleaning-the-wp-page-pharma-hack-in-wordpress.html
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> Pharma hacks are common website infections categorized under SEO spam.
> With pharma hacks, the attacker exploits vulnerable websites to
> distribute pharmaceutical content to search engines and the sites
> visitors. Symptoms of a pharma hack include embedded links and anchor
> text on pages or modified listings in Search Engine Results Pages
> (SERPs). These attacks most often target search engines like Google or
> Bing in an attempt to increase traffic to illegal pharmaceutical
> businesses.
> [End excerpt]

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