I’ve spent much of the last 24 hours trying to undo what the Russians have done. For many people who have tried to access my website with a mobile device, they have been surprised with porn that’s impossible to unsee. Tasteless. Not erotic at all. Icky.
The particular hack is pretty well known. Sucuri, a well-respected computer security and malware detection and prevention company, explained it on their blog a couple weeks ago. After I post this blog, I’m hiring them to clean my site and then monitor it for the next year at least. Hopefully, that will save the eyes of my dozen or so loyal readers.
I don’t understand the purpose of this hack at all. There are no ads on the porn. Just picture after picture. What do they get out of the redirect? Is it just thumbing their nose at America? “You sanction us for taking Crimea, we direct random blog readers to porn. Take that!” (It helps to say it with a Boris Badenov accent.) Is it hacking because they can? Do they send you to a site they hope you will love and then join at some elite level? I can’t imagine what horrors await an elite member of the site I was linked to. It probably borders on illegality.
Seriously. Tell me what they get out of it. I really want to know.
I don’t understand why anyone does those kinds of things. It just boggles the mind. I also don’t understand why people send out spam. Really, what is the netting you?
With spam, I think some people reply and they get money out of it. It’s hard to believe that someone would think the UN really does have $8.2 million in an account for them, but it must work to some degree. The porn hack, though? I don’t understand it.
Porn is something that fires people up – either through concupiscence or ire. If they can get you to click that link, they have you. That might mean sending you to an advertising partner (for which they get paid), getting you to pay for something (which doesn’t have to be porn), or installing some variety of malware which can lead to more of the same, or even take over your computer silently to capture your bank login information.