ITPEC FE Subject A April 2024 Question 30
ITPEC FE Subject A April 2024 — Question 30 of 60
SEO poisoning — identifies the attack that manipulates search engine rankings to surface malicious sites.
SEO poisoning (also called search engine poisoning) involves using black-hat SEO techniques — keyword stuffing, link farms, cloaking — to push a malicious website to the top of search results. The goal is to trick users into visiting a fake/malicious site that appears legitimate.
Why not others:
- (a) Cross-site scripting — injects malicious scripts into trusted web pages; unrelated to search rankings
- (b) DNS cache poisoning — corrupts DNS resolver cache to redirect traffic at the DNS level, not via search engines
- (d) Social engineering — manipulates people psychologically (phishing calls, pretexting); not search-engine-specific
Key rule: If the attack targets search engine rankings to lure users → SEO poisoning.
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