Google has been the answer to many of our questions for years. And it’s not like he knows everything, of course, but he has a tremendous ability to know where to find it. From the history of the Sumerian civilization to the hours of the pizzeria next to our house, almost every time we have a question, our journey to knowledge and information begins in the most used search engine in the world, and with exceptions in the end it turns out to be a very, very short trip.

Google is not perfect (like any other technological solution, of course), but the constant improvement of the search engine since its birth, in 1995 as a prototype, has allowed what started as a project of two young and talented students from Stanford to become one of the biggest technological companies in the world. Although there are other companies that offer similar services, Thinking about what our lives would be like without Google today is a very revealing exercise..

Those responsible for the search engine are constantly working on the famous algorithm, which is primarily responsible for the selection and ranking of search results, something that brings communication professionals, SEO professionals and, unfortunately, also cybercriminals. Because? Because the ability to trick a search engine into displaying results by using malicious links in user queries is a very powerful propagation vector.

These attempts happen all the time and are well known to companies, but according to a report published by Spamhaus Technologies, In recent days, the number of malicious software search results on Google has increased significantly. To do this, and according to the information, cybercriminals use the search engine’s advertising platform and pretend to be the legitimate pages of the developers of the mentioned applications. This form of fraud is known as malvertising.

In the case of getting a good placement, even if it is paid, and creating a website (to which a promoted link in Google leads), malvertisers manages to trick a large number of users, either to make them download different apps than they wantedas a competitive product, make a payment for software that is cheaper or free on its official site, or unfortunately for affected users, some kind of malware.

Google generally identifies and blocks malvertising, but cybercriminals are constantly working to find ways around these security measures, and right now it seems they’ve found a loophole that they’re exploiting well, spoofing apps like Adobe Reader, Gimp, Microsoft Teams, OBS, Slack, Tor and Thunderbird.

We can trust that Google will find a way to avoid this illegitimate use of Google Ads in the short term, but if you’re looking for software, it’s best to go directly to its developer’s website. And if you’re in doubt or don’t know, go to Google, but avoid sponsored links, you know, the ones that appear at the top, they’re labeled as advertising.