How security companies use hacker techniques to improve their Google rank

The author is careless in using screenshots that implicate companies that have nothing to do with this issue. This article is a linkbait remix of the most obvious security tip out there: don't download and install stuff from places you don't know you can trust.

Proving my point...I can't speak to the Wordpress themes, but one of the screenshot looks like it's the Drupal theme called Acquia Marina (http://drupal.org/node/315555).

You've got four people who are commiting to the git repository (http://drupal.org/node/315548/committers). The only way this code gets in there is if one of those four is putting it in, which they're not as you can view the commits and dig through the code to see if there is anything like this (http://drupal.org/node/315548/commits). They have not.

Therefore this theme has to be coming from another source rather than Drupal.org, the officially supported source for Drupal themes, and to my point, Acquia, a company founded by Dries Buytaert, the fellow that created Drupal.

So if you're downloading code for Drupal from somewhere other than Drupal.org, or downloading themes for WP from somewhere other than WP, or Microsoft system patches from somewhere other than Microsoft, or apt-get-ing from random sources, yup, you've got a risk exposure.

As an aside, the OP site is using Drupal.

Let me play devil's advocate here. Is there any proof that the companies who are linked to are aware of the links? Isn't it possible that someone else (say, a rival company looking to tarnish a rival's reputation) is buying the links? Or that the companies have contracted out SEO to a third party, which is buying links in violation of their contract?

there is plenty of free software which is up front about including ad's, which is the ethical way to offer free software and get paid to do so. Also, this is not some software that was developed as free, but often pirated themes/modules/plugins modified and then billed as free to put in ads.

Also, one of the links in the article does show many of these echo'd. In some cases it is a lot of javascript, in other pure links.

As for proof, you are right, it is possible these guys are using unethical SEO firms instead, but I still think they should be monitoring and dealing with this issue. In some cases, there are thousands of backlinks which have similar footprints. I have trouble buying that they are blissfully unaware.

Maybe this is why all the top search results seem to give away scare-ware or the "Your PC is infected now!" and offers to infect it some more....

sure.. it is possible everything you wrote there... but just echo that code.. and read the source-code... then come with a post and start complaining about free software...