Google to alert users of possible malware infection

Google Malware Warning 545px

Google's engineers say they have noticed unusual patterns of activity on its search engine which has given it a way to detect a certain type of malware. As a result, the company has altered the code for its search engine to place a warning at the top of the search results that a computer has been infected.

The malware apparently sends a small amount of traffic through a proxy. The company believes that a few million PCs may be infected, and since launching the feature Tuesday has warned "hundreds of thousands" of its users to possible infection.

"The malware appears to have gotten onto users' computers from one of roughly a hundred variants of fake antivirus, or 'fake AV' software that has been in circulation for a while," security engineer Damian Menscher said. "We aren't aware of a common name for the malware."

Google seemed to suggest that it was looking for users connected to a certain set of proxies. After all, many Internet users employ proxies for security reasons, and just a general check to see if the user is accessing Google through a proxy would lead to false warnings.

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