Hacked Thai College Website Abused to Redirect Google Searchers to Illegal Online Casino
ADEX uncovered a hacked Thai college domain serving casino pages through real Google search redirects, part of a global campaign compromising government and education sites.
Anti-fraud platform ADEX found a casino-themed page planted on the compromised km.chpc.ac.th domain in Thailand's educational .ac.th zone, which Google indexed and ranked first to redirect users to illegal online gambling. The scheme achieved full ad cloaking without deploying any cloaking code by chaining a genuine Google results page and a third-party redirect. The same domain-borrowing tactic is tracked globally: Thailand reports roughly 30 million gambling URLs across about 1,000 public-sector sites, Indonesia blocked 683 government and education sites, and Netcraft found an underground market selling access to more than 15,000 compromised .gov, .edu and ccTLD domains. ADEX argues Google's site reputation abuse policy does not cover institutions that are hijacked without their knowledge.
- Casino page planted on compromised km.chpc.ac.th ranked first on Google for targeted queries
- Cloaking achieved with no custom code by chaining a real Google results page and a redirect
- Thailand reports about 30 million gambling URLs across roughly 1,000 public-sector sites
- Netcraft tracks a market selling access to over 15,000 compromised .gov, .edu and ccTLD domains
- ADEX urges ad networks to treat .ac., .gov and .edu zones as flags in redirect chains
- Victims
- km.chpc.ac.th
- Organizations
- ADEXGoogleNetcraftAdTech HoldingcSide
From the original article
3 min read at cybersecuritynews.com
A compromised Thai college website was quietly turned into a springboard for an illegal online casino, according to new findings from anti-fraud platform ADEX, which says the campaign achieved full ad cloaking without deploying a single line of cloaking code, mirroring evasion tactics seen in campaigns designed to bypass Google Ads screening. The scheme, uncovered […]
By Kaaviya · cybersecuritynews.com
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