By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
For the Los Alamos Daily Post
A.I. is a powerful tool, but reports from Malwarebytes, an antivirus provider and security research firm, warn users of Bing’s A.I. chatbot search to be wary of ads serving up malware laden sites … Microsoft unveiled their new A.I. assisted search, “Bing Chat'' in February of this year.
The new search tool was meant to be a game changer, and possibly turn the tables on Google, which has dominated search for years. Bing Chat allows users to search interactively with a chatbot using natural language, and is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Tech giants like Microsoft and Google make most of their money from ads, so it wasn’t too surprising when Microsoft introduced ads to Bing Chat search.
Unfortunately online ads can be risky and can trick users into visiting malicious sites and possibly installing malware. Ads can be inserted into the search results in various ways, one is if a user hovers over a link and an ad is displayed before the results, as in the image below from Malwarebytes.
Users have the choice of visiting either link, but are more likely to pick the top, malicious link, and the “ad” label is so small users may miss it.
If the first link is clicked, users are taken to a website (mynetfoldersip[.]cfd); the purpose of this site is to filter traffic and separate real victims from bots, sandboxes, or security researchers.
The site does this by checking a user’s IP address, time zone, and various other system settings that can identify virtual machines.
Once identified as a real human, victims are redirected to a fake site (advenced-ip- scanner[.]com) – note the very subtle misspelling of the official download site- that mimics the official one while all others are sent to a decoy page. Once victims reach the malicious site, the next step is to download the installer, which will then install the malware.
Be cautious in any searches for software downloads, A.I. powered or not, and keep in mind that targeted ads may be malicious and could install malware on your computer.
Follow these guidelines to stay safe when searching for software downloads:
- Only download from legitimate, trusted sites, if possible always download from the software distributor’s official site.
- Make sure you have installed an antivirus software, and make sure it is kept up to date – keep in mind that malware is constantly evolving, and if your antivirus hasn’t updated recently it will not have the info it needs to catch viruses and malware.
- Be cautious, make sure you are navigating to a legitimate site and not a malicious lookalike.
A.I. is indeed a powerful tool, and can help us do so many things, but be careful, and keep in mind that a search can lead you to a malicious site and malware downloads. Threat actors are constantly evolving and looking for new ways to scam users, be cautious in all internet searches, A.I. powered or not, ads can be malicious and lead you to malware.
For now, I think I’ll stick to using A.I. for its most important purpose … creating weird, random cat images like this one “Rainbow cats eating hot dogs in space”.
Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
