According to a Jan. 11 post on the popular PC Master Race subreddit, the fake AMD site appeared in the ads section of Google Search results. At the time of writing, the site has been taken down from both Google and Bing’s search results, and it appears to be offline. An inspection of the site shows a striking resemblance to AMD’s official website, but there are some telltale signs it’s a copycat. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) is one of the two leading computer hardware companies. Its Radeon graphics cards and Ryzen chips are popular among gamers. Along with Nvidia Corporation, AMD has dominated the GPU market for decades.
Phony AMD GPU Driver Software
The Reddit user who encountered the malicious site searched for “amd driver” on Google. A few days ago, a search for the same term on Bing also turned up a phony AMD site in the ads section. Cybercriminals are known to create fake websites spoofing popular software companies to spread malware and steal the personal information of victims. It can be tricky to distinguish these fake websites from the real ones, but there are some giveaways, like their domain address. Most companies use their brand name as their web address. When spoofing companies, cybercriminals usually use strings of text in their domain address or use a different domain name. For example, the official AMD website is https://www.amd.com/. However, the domain address of the fake website is https://www.amd-graphic-driver.com/ Another way to identify a fake website is to check if all pages look professional and if the links work. A Reddit user who visited the fake AMD site said most of the site doesn’t work, “just the main page which wants you to download something similar to the msi afterburner issue.” Search engines like Google Search and Bing display links marked as “Ad” on top of a page before search results. Cybercriminals are increasingly taking advantage of this to lead gullible victims to malicious websites that contain adware, spyware, or even cryptocurrency mining malware. On Thursday, Jan. 12, cybersecurity firm Cyble revealed that cybercriminals are leveraging Google Ads to spread a sophisticated info stealer named Rhadamanthys. In October 2021, Google removed several ads for stalkerware apps. At the time, a Google spokesperson said Google removes such ads immediately and continues to “track emerging behaviors to prevent bad actors from trying to evade our detection systems.”
How to Spot a Fake Website
To prevent downloading malicious files from fake websites, verify a website address before you download any file. You can also use a URL lookup tool like WHOIS Search to see when a site was registered. The fake AMD website above was registered on Jan 8. using Namecheap. We also recommend using powerful adblocking and anonymization software such as uBlock origin to filter out such ads and malicious webpages. You will find several other options in our article on the best ad blockers for 2023. Also, using a privacy-focused web browser and a premium antivirus solution can protect you from malicious sites and harmful downloads.
