( No, Silly --> It's S.E.O. for Dummies ! )
Security in the Modern Context ...
I was asked to analyze the declining results of some websites owned by a small company in the Southern United States. After building a replacement for the original and completing the usual metrics, I began to map the distribution of the client's unique strings on the net. I discovered entire pages from several sites in the client's domain had been replicated (with various attempts at obfusciation) on websites operated by "other entities" registered in several foreign countries.
Additionally, participation in web based political forums by the registrant was discovered (in 2 languages) - originating from two non-North American Countries. I described these findings to the site owner as an apparent attempt to craft web pages to exploit the process by which search engines compile the result snippets seen by users. (As snippets were constructed in those days, in some cases, clicking on the "manipulated" link would lead a user to an unintended page).
Google's, Yahoo's, and other spider's cached data helped clarify the evolution and distribution of this 'exploit' which was limited to a single non-US actor with (30+) Websites on servers in states from Florida to California. - and two variant constructs registered to small publishing companies.
The most interesting instance was an infringing surreptitious Web based affiliation relationship with a Hollywood Movie - (Now in DVD release - Black and White Films, Zenpix, LLC Myriad Pictures, Inc.) which the Studio shutdown 20 minutes after notification.
To obviate the clever cloaking menace, I coded a scanner/crawler to quickly test client's sites against the (un) usual suspects for combinations of crafted pages and meta tags that may result in such infringement.
It is hoped that discovery of this occulted conduit might help reduce
the CPU temperature at Fort Meade (;>) .
I. I. Rabi comes to mind:
"We Drove Traffic to your Website ... , what more would you want ,,,
'The Face on Mars' ?"
Babel by Knight
