At some point over the weekend, the official website of Belinda Carlisle was compromised, displaying banner ads for a Canadian Pharmacy page. Here’s the Google search result for “Belinda Carlisle” – note the “Site may have been hacked” warning from Google under the top result, which of course happens to be the website in question:
Stats reveal that the site pulls in a fair bit of traffic, with December 1st nabbing 6,000 or so visitors and around 80% of traffic coming from search. It’s a perfect storm of popular artist, unique search name and a top ranking final destination serving up things they shouldn’t be.
Shall we take a look?
The banner ad up at the top touting Cialis and Viagra – along with a large “Enter Pharmacy” button – should definitely not be there. It’s possible the site was hacked by exploiting what appears to be an outdated version of WordPress running on the homepage. A quick check of the HTML source, and:
WordPress 3.8.12
The latest version of WordPress is 4.1.1, so this does seem to be a frontrunner for “How they got in”. As for the banner ad itself, it leads to a “Canadian Drug Store” located at
edpills365(dot)net
We don’t advise buying drugs from random websites you happen to stumble across online. Unfortunately, spammers are banking on visitors to the musician’s website assuming the ads are legit / safe to use because they think everything on the URL is supposed to be there – one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Fortunately, Ms. Carlisle is aware of the hack and has said it’ll be fixed – with any luck fans will be able to peruse her content without the threat of large PILLS HERE banners at the top of the screen.
Christopher Boyd
