ITPEC FE Morning April 2018 Question 38
ITPEC FE Morning April 2018 — Question 38 of 80
SEO Poisoning — manipulating search engine results to rank a malicious website near the top
SEO poisoning is an attack where adversaries use search engine optimization techniques (keyword stuffing, link farms, cloaking) to push malicious websites to the top of search results. Users click these results expecting legitimate content but are redirected to phishing pages or malware downloads.
The correct answer is c) SEO poisoning.
Why not the others:
- a) Cross-site scripting (XSS): Injects malicious scripts into a trusted website's pages — unrelated to search rankings.
- b) DNS cache poisoning: Corrupts a DNS resolver's cache to redirect domain lookups to a malicious IP address — targets DNS, not search engines.
- d) Social engineering: Tricks people through psychological manipulation (phishing emails, pretexting) — not a technical manipulation of search results.
Key rule: If the question mentions manipulating search engine results to surface malicious sites → SEO poisoning.
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