SQL Injection Poses Search Engine Optimisation Threat

Web sites that have been compromised by the recent wave of SQL injection attacks on ASP and PHP based sites have plenty to deal with already, but it seems a threat to their search engine ranking may be a longer lasting problem.

SQL injection is an attack where nasty input (you might hear this referred to as "maliciously crafted parameters or names") is sent to web applications - typically in page addresses or form submissions. If the application doesn't validate the data correctly, it can be used to compromise information in an associated database. This may cause loss, destruction or alteration of data. Recent attacks have added malicious code into page content with the aim of compromising people visiting the hacked sites, if the page output is not validated and encoded correctly.

You can find compromised web sites by searching for the JavaScript code embedded in the content after it has been re-indexed by search engine crawlers (robots). However, it looks like some of these are being removed from search engine catalogues, meaning the site will suffer from a significant reduction in traffic from people using search engines (natural searches).

Site owners should of course ensure their sites are not liable to SQL injection attacks, but I think they should also monitor changes in search engine rankings and visitor traffic patterns.

Has anyone had this affect them?