You need to log in to your bank. You type the name into Google and click the first result. The logo looks right. The login page looks right. But it's not your bank-it's a fake site a hacker paid to place at the top of your search results.
This isn't hypothetical. Recent research shows hackers are abusing Google search results and paid ads to deliver phishing attacks-a fundamentally different threat than the suspicious emails we've trained ourselves to spot. Nobody taught us to distrust Google. That's what makes this so effective.
The first tactic is search poisoning. Researchers at Bolster AI discovered thousands of fake websites crafted to outrank legitimate ones in Google results. In one campaign, over 7,000 government-themed domains published malicious pages about tax refunds and public benefits. The content read like real government guidance-but every page was designed to steal personal information. You wouldn't question a book on the shelf at your local library. We treat search engines the same way-if Google ranked it, it must be legitimate. Hackers exploit that trust using the same ranking techniques marketers use, except they're promoting fake sites instead of real ones.
The second tactic is even more brazen-buying ads. You know those sponsored results that appear above regular search listings? Hackers purchase those ad spots targeting searches people make when they're ready to act: logging into a cloud service, verifying an account, or contacting customer support. The ad looks legitimate, but leads straight to a phishing page. And these malicious ads are short-lived by design. Attackers run them just long enough to capture credentials, then relaunch under a different domain. By the time someone reports it, a fresh one has already taken its place.
In our industry, the stakes are especially high. Imagine someone on your team searching for a wire transfer portal or a document signing platform and clicking a sponsored result. One wrong click, and an attacker has access to systems handling sensitive financial transactions. Once someone has your email access, your world changes fast: wire instructions, payoff statements, invoices, and "updated banking details" become easy to impersonate, because the attacker can watch real conversations and strike at the right moment.
Takeaways:
- Use bookmarks, not search engines, for logins. For any site where you enter credentials-your bank, email, title production software, wire platforms-save a bookmark and use it every time. Don't let Google be the middleman.
- Scroll past sponsored results. When searching for a login page and the top result says "Sponsored," skip it. Legitimate companies don't need to buy ads for their own login pages.
- Read the address bar before you type anything. Watch for subtle differences-extra words, misspellings, or unusual extensions like ".net" instead of ".com." If anything looks off, close the tab.
- Let your password manager be your guard dog. It matches credentials to specific web addresses. If the site is fake, it won't fill anything in-that's your red flag that something is wrong.
We trained ourselves to spot phishing emails. Now we need that same skepticism for search results. The address bar is your best friend-read it before you type a single credential.
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Genady Vishnevetsky
Chief Info Security Officer
Stewart Title Guaranty Company
Houston TX
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