{"id":138482,"date":"2015-09-14T10:10:02","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T08:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=138482"},"modified":"2015-09-14T10:11:02","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T08:11:02","slug":"google-webmaster-tools-used-by-hackers-in-website-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/138482-google-webmaster-tools-used-by-hackers-in-website-attacks.html","title":{"rendered":"Google Webmaster Tools used by hackers in website attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Website hackers are using Google&#8217;s Webmaster Tools to keep infected websites under their control for longer.<\/p>\n<p>Google Webmaster Tools is used by webmasters to communicate with Google. It is also used to see if there are any indexing problems, or whether a website is infected by malware.<\/p>\n<p>Hackers are now verifying themselves as owners of websites using Google&#8217;s Webmaster Tools. This helps them keep hacks under wraps for longer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.sucuri.net\/2015\/09\/malicious-google-search-console-verifications.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Website security experts Sucuri<\/strong><\/a> said there are many reasons hackers will register as owners of a\u00a0domain. It allows them to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gather statistics that tell them how their black-hat SEO campaign performs.<\/li>\n<li>Submit sitemaps of their spam pages to have Google discover them.<\/li>\n<li>Get notifications about hack detection. This helps estimate how efficiently Google can detect their doorways and the amount of damage it does to their campaign.<\/li>\n<li>Unverify legitimate site owners\u2019 accounts so they don\u2019t receive any security notifications from Google Search Console.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sucuri said site owners should prepare for such attacks and take advantage of Google\u2019s notification system.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make sure you register and verify ownership of all your sites.<\/li>\n<li>If you receive \u201cnew owner\u201d notifications from Google, don\u2019t take them lightly.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s quite easy for hackers to remove you as an owner of your site when someone has access to your server. And you will not be notified about this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on security<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/136934-225000-apple-account-passwords-stolen-through-ios-malware.html\">225,000 Apple account passwords stolen through iOS malware<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/136452-huge-increase-in-ddos-attacks.html\">Huge increase in DDoS attacks<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/136314-ashley-madison-offers-r4-9m-bounty-for-hackers.html\">Ashley Madison offers R4.9m bounty for hackers<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Website hackers are using Google&#8217;s Webmaster Tools to keep infected websites under their control for longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":137094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[36,32822,12049,32820],"class_list":["post-138482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-active","tag-google-webmaster-tools","tag-seo","tag-sucuri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138484,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138482\/revisions\/138484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}