An Indonesian gambling syndicate has been hiding illegal online casinos and lottery pages inside official government websites across at least 16 countries, affecting around 20 government websites. Their motive is to leverage the credibility of these government websites to boost their casinos’ rankings in Google search results.
The syndicate is not operating crypto scams; it’s illegal online gambling, and no cryptocurrency is involved. The initial attack affected six countries: Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa, but has since expanded to 10 more countries: Mozambique, Malawi, Mauritania, Rwanda, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Libya, Madagascar, and Tanzania.
Google trusts a government (.gov) website. The syndicate’s mission isn’t to take down or steal data from these government websites. Rather, they simply slip their own casino pages into the government’s pages, so their gambling brands borrow the government’s reputation and rank higher on Google.
Independent security researcher and founder of Zend Cybersecurity Threat
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