PASADENA, Calif., May 10 (UPI) -- Software scammers offering cheap Adobe software products have hacked a number of Web pages belonging to NASA and Stanford University, security researchers said.
Shady online entrepreneurs hawking knockoff Adobe products compromised pages on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web site just ahead of NASA's final launch of the shuttle Endeavour, scheduled for next Monday, Computerworld reported Tuesday.
The hacked pages included swathes of "nonsense text" and interest-generating keywords, Computerworld said.
Once they hacked the pages, the scam artists used a technique known as search engine poisoning to trick Google into ranking their hostage pages at the top of its search results.
Online scam artists are quick to take advantage of any event of widespread significance, from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami to Osama bin Laden's death, to fleece unsuspecting Web users they know will be using the Internet to seek information, SecurityNewsDaily reported.
