The inventor of the Internet just got had. Al Gore’s website, the blog which is set up to promote "An Inconvenient Truth", has been hacked to include links to online drugs like Xanax, Viagra and Valium.
The hack is not very obvious and cannot be seen unless you view source on the website. As of this post, when you view source on Gore’s site and scroll down near the bottom, you will see multiple links to various drugs. All of the links point to a blog hosted by Westmont College, a small Christian college based in Santa Barbara, California.
The speculation is that the hackers were able to gain access by exploiting some flaw in WordPress, the software used to power Gore’s site as well as many blogs across the Internet (including this one).
The reason they do it is, no doubt, for search engine rankings. It is thought that by injecting links onto popular sites, the search engines will pick up on it and raise the perceived authority of those sites selling drugs. This is a common problem online, and even here at PCMech, we routinely have to filter our "comment spam". Comment spam is where spammers will post blog comments to our blog filled with links to porn, drugs, you name it. They are hoping to profit from our traffic. What they don’t seem to understand is that it does them no good anyway.
So, poor Al. Heh, not really. More like, welcome to the Internet, Al. This is the way things roll here.
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
