Google Text Ad Trojan Wreaks Havoc

December 21st, 2007

A new Trojan has been discovered in an unlikely place: Google ads. According to BitDefender, the Trojan is actively hijacking Google text ads and replacing them with ads from a different provider.BitDefender, which named the threat Trojan.Qhost.WU, said the Trojan modifies the infected computer’s hosts file, which controls domain mappings. The Trojan damages both users and webmasters because it takes away viewers and thus a possible money source from Web sites, BitDefender virus analyst Attila-Mihaly Balazs said in a statement.

These days, ads may not be such an unlikely place to find Trojans. In fact, according to the Q1 2007 Web Trends Security Report published by Finjan, a computer security company, some 80 percent of malicious code now comes from online ads.

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