Hacklink is a black-market SEO platform designed to help cybercriminals manipulate search engine rankings by exploiting compromised websites. It operates as a marketplace where attackers can purchase access to thousands of legitimate but compromised domains—especially those with high reputational value, such as .gov, .edu, and country-code TLDs. These domains are particularly desirable because search engines like Google inherently trust them, making links from these sites powerful tools for boosting the visibility of other websites in search results.
How Hacklink Works
• Marketplace Model: Hacklink operates as an online marketplace. It allows buyers to browse and purchase access to compromised websites. Prices start as low as $1 per listing, with higher prices for more reputable domains.
• Automated Link Injection: Through Hacklink’s control panel, buyers select keywords and URLs to be injected into the source code of compromised sites. The platform automates the injection of JavaScript or HTML containing outbound links.
• SEO Poisoning: The injected links are tailored with specific anchor text to target particular search queries (e.g., gambling, pharmaceuticals). These links are often invisible to human visitors but are detected by search engine crawlers, which interpret them as endorsements of the attacker-controlled sites.
• Search Engine Manipulation: As a result, the malicious or fraudulent sites gain artificially elevated rankings, sometimes appearing above legitimate businesses in search results.
Notable Tactics and Targets
• Targeted Industries: Online gambling is a frequent target, with organized groups like “Neon SEO Academy” and “SEOLink” specializing in boosting phishing and scam sites in this sector.
• Private Blog Networks (PBNs): Hacklink also supports the use of PBNs to amplify the effect of these manipulations, further blurring the line between aggressive marketing and outright fraud.
• Invisible Attacks: The compromised sites appear normal to users, making detection challenging for site owners and increasing the risk for unsuspecting users who may land on highly-ranked malicious pages.