Duke, Michigan.gov, CA.gov Compromised in Large-Scale SEO Attack
4 hours ago
- #Cybersecurity
- #GoogleRanking
- #SEO
- A large-scale Parasite SEO campaign is compromising high-authority .gov and .edu domains.
- Attackers exploit vulnerabilities to publish spam pages, generating millions of organic visits for illicit keywords.
- Examples include Duke University (duke.edu) and michigan.gov, with traffic spikes to 21.8M and 8M visits respectively.
- Compromised pages rank instantly due to high domain authority (DR 91-94), targeting keywords like 'ai undresser'.
- Over 3,000 spam pages on ca.gov generate 2.1M monthly visits, while wayne.edu is also affected.
- Google's authority bias allows spam on trusted domains to rank #1 instantly.
- Mitigation steps include auditing vulnerabilities, monitoring Google Search Console, and configuring robots.txt properly.
- High-authority sites are prime targets; securing web applications is critical for brand protection.