May 28, 2008

Leading search engines are facing a problem of malware faking web-pages. According to Yandex a number of computers infected by such malicious programs may reach hundreds of thousands.

A computer is infected in order to fake or manipulate search results. A user of an infected machine follows a link displayed on a search results page but gets to an unrelated web-site. Still the unrelated link can look as other genuine links provided by a search engine. As a consequence a user fails to find required information, an advertiser pays for unrelated traffic but above all such malicious activities have negative impact on the credibility of a search engine blamed for selling out top positions on their search results pages.

Search engines in Russia, such as Google, MSN (Live), Rambler encountered the problem. The Russian search engine Yandex was also one of them. The management of the company concerned by malicious activities of such Trojans contacted the anti-virus laboratory of Doctor Web, Ltd. Some time ago programs faking web-pages were classified by the Dr.Web anti-virus as adware. However, after the appeal by Yandex such applications have been identified as Trojans. From now on Yandex advises using Dr.Web CureIt! as the best free tool curing computers of such Trojan programs. Unlike other utilities, Dr.Web CureIt! can be run without an installation and doesn't conflict with any existing anti-virus software.

Such malicious programs do not impose a threat to users of Dr.Web anti-virus who regularly update the virus database. If you are using an anti-virus of another vendor but you think that your computer can be compromised by such a Trojan we recommend you to download Dr.Web CureIt! and scan your machine for viruses.

Using Dr.Web CureIt! Is the best way to check the efficiency of your anti-virus. It doesn’t require installation and doesn’t conflict with any known anti-virus. Your experience with the utility will provide you with enough reason to migrate to Dr.Web anti-virus.