Fortinet: Beware of Google's Blogger

Surfing Google's Blogger Web site is dangerous, warns Fortinet. Several of the blogs on the site have been taken over by miscreants and redirect to phishing Web sites or try to load malicious software onto PCs, the security firm said in an alert Wednesday.

In one example a Blogger blog redirects to what appears to be an online pharmacy, but is in fact a site hosted in China that's part of a scam to trick people into giving up personal details and financial information, Fortinet said.

In another example, a blog site that appears to belong to a Honda CR450 enthusiast actually tries to install a Trojan horse, Fortinet said. The blog likely was hacked, Fortinet said.

But while these examples may be real in that the blogs are malicious, Blogger wasn't hacked, according to Google.

"These are not legitimate blogs that were compromised. They appear to be deliberately set up to promote phishing, which is against our terms of service," a Google representative said in an e-mailed statement. "We are investigating, and blogs found to include malicious code or promote phishing will be deleted."

Safe surfing tools such as Exploit Prevention Labs' LinkScanner and McAfee's SiteAdvisor could help protect against such malicious sites. Additionally, staying up-to-date on security patches, as well as turning off scripting in a Web browser and using common sense and caution help people to stay safe when traversing the Web.

UPDATE (4.30 PM PT THURSDAY 3/15):After further investigation, Fortinet's research team has updated its alert to say that cybercrooks may have actually created the blogs to post malicious content, rather than hacking into them.