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2011

SCAREWARE DETECTED BY GOOGLE

July 23, 2011 0

KrebsonSecurity, which is a security blog alleged that the search engine giant has discovered a virus which was not known till now and is a malicious computer virus. This virus is one which is being used for allowing websites with an increase in the number of visitors to their websites. This is a search virus which redirects Google users to their respective websites. Google has claimed that this virus has already infected a million PCs till now.

Krebson Security in a report stated that Google is working to fight against this new virus. It said that for this cause, Google is in process of creation of an new alerting system which after implementation would let infected Google users see a pop up warning which would be in yellow above the results of a specific search which is affected.

Security Engineer of Google, Damian Menscher who was actually the discoverer of this said virus said that computers which were getting infected by the malware were being trapped via downloads of anti-virus softwares which are fake. This is on a common basis termed as “scareware”. If a user is infected by this virus, then it so happens that whenever the users try to use Google, they would be redirected to the servers of cyber criminals. These servers serve their clients by tailor making the results for the users which gets search results for these specified clients majorly.

This malicious virus was found when workers of Google were in to perform the maintenance of the data centre of a company. It so happened that while maintaining the data centre, it was reported to Menscher there there were almost a million PCs which were attempting to get connected to the data centre which was shutdown. It was odd because the engineers had processed for redirection of the online traffic. It was only then that they gained the knowledge of this new virus. Google ensured that they are investigating and it would help the users who have been victimized to get the virus removed from their PCs.

How does this virus infect a computer? When one downloads any such anti-virus software, which once downloaded makes use of those Windows systems which are vulnerable. This software then controls the search queries on the web.

There are a number of viruses which are affecting intenet users who do not suspect them and this new malicious virus is yet again an addition to the list. This virus is quite similar to the virus which was reported by Virgin Media which had attacked Virgin’s broadband customers. This new virus shook the government to take up some steps against those committing cyber crime. Government responding to the increasing number of threats called for laws opposing such crimes which would be much tougher on them and fresh in their own way. Talk Talk even faced a similar problem.

The blog of KrebsonSecurity however did not let others know whether the search engine giant had come to know as to from when this virus is in the market or how did it originate.

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