Is Steven Seagal secretly endorsing Viagra and payday loans? His website suggests so

Steven SeagalHere’s something strange.

Have you tried Googling for the magic combination of words “Steven”, “Seagal” and “Viagra”?

I hope your answer is “no”. After all, what normal person would search the internet for such words?

But if you did, you might see something strange.

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You see, what’s odd is that four of the top seven results if you Google “Steven Seagal Viagra” point to the kickboxing action hero’s official website.

Steven Seagal search results

If you check out the source code of the 61-year-old movie tough-guy’s home page, you will find that blackhat search engine poisoning techniques are being used to boost the search rankings of Cialis, payday loan and Viagra websites.

steven-html-seagal

At first, I wondered if stevenseagal.com wasn’t the Steven Seagal’s real official website. But I think it has to be. After all his “verified” Facebook page (with over 1.5 million Likes) points to it.

It seems to me that there are two possibilities.

Either, times are hard for the ponytail-wearing film star, producer, writer, martial artist, guitarist, reserve deputy sheriff and holder of a 7th-dan black belt in Aikido.

Or, at some point, Seagal’s website was exploited by hackers who managed to inject some search engine poison to try to boost their websites. All of the websites are dead or unresponsive now, which suggests that the attacks may have taken place some time ago, and Steven’s IT team haven’t properly tidied up afterwards.

Leaving crumbs lying around after a website attack is not only sloppy and allows the hackers to (potentially) continue to benefit, but also makes a loud and clear statement to the rest of the world that you once had a problem with your site’s security.

There are, no doubt, many websites not run by professional hard men who are equally guilty of serving up evidence that they were once the victims of internet hackers.

Thanks to the loyal reader who sent me an anonymous tip about Seagal’s website. I wonder why he chose to remain anonymous? :)


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

One comment on “Is Steven Seagal secretly endorsing Viagra and payday loans? His website suggests so”

  1. Mike

    This is not uncommon and my websites get hit all the time. Spammers go after CMS (content management systems) and use scripts to inject 'blogs' or 'posts' with advertisements. Normally, as site admins, we hide these pages from normal users, but googlebot finds pages most users don't. The best way to protect yourself is, if you have a 'read only' style website (no forum or method to post back to the site) and you use any CMS like WordPress or Joomla, then you must disable all methods for users to sign up and post. Most admins don't do it because they assume people wont phish their websites for hidden post pages.

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