The Internet has been the target of various malpractices, spam and malware being the most common. Once again someone has found a way to infect computers with a malware, whose purpose, for the time being remains a mystery.
Google, in its official blog on late Tuesday posted that they have detected a number of Windows-based computers infected with a particular type of malicious software or `malware’. This malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called ‘proxies.’
The search engine giant has taken steps to warn infected users. Matt Cutts, software engineer who leads the company’s Webspam team posted, “If you go to Google and do a search (any word will do) right now, check to see whether you get a ‘Your computer appears to be infected’ message at the top of the search results.”
“If you see the warning, you need to clean up the infection from the machine.”
The widespread infection was recently discovered during a routine maintenance check and confirmed by security engineers at several companies, he said.
Currently it appears as though only the Windows platform is affected by the malware.
Google did not speculate on the scale of the infection or why modified data was being transmitted to the search engine in the first place.
Google does not have the ability to detect the presence of viruses on user’s computers, it can only detect the suspicious network activity caused by the malware.
Google says it hopes to combat the spread of the infection by making sure users are aware of it and can update their anti-virus software and catch it.
Google’s Help Center also offers tips for scanning systems for malware and how to remove infections. Malware, or malicious software, is often designed to disrupt normal computer operations or gather private information about the user.