Security researchers at Symantec have uncovered a click-fraud trojan targeted to the online advertising networks of Google, Yahoo and Baidu.com, China's largest independent internet search engine.

This trojan, Trojan.Trafbrush, artificially inflates the number of page views a variety of ads are receiving, Zulfikar Ramzan, a senior principal researcher at Symantec Security Response, told SCMagazineUS.com. This is the second such trojan - the first was Trojan.Farfli - Symantec has discovered recently.

Ramzan suspects the authors of this trojan operate web pages that display ads from the three search engines. These are the so-called affiliates in the internet advertising environment; the search engines act as agencies for companies who want their ads placed on content-appropriate websites.

Posted by Annette King in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:24

SEATTLE — Two days after actor Heath Ledger died, e-mails began moving across the Internet purportedly carrying a link to a detailed police report divulging "the real reason" behind the actor's death. Ledger had been summarily drafted into the service of a botnet.

Bots are compromised computers controlled by profit-minded crooks. Those e-mails were spread by a network of thousands of bots, called a botnet. Anyone who clicked on the link got instantly absorbed into the fast-spreading Mega-D botnet, says security firm Marshal. Mega-D enriches its operators, mainly by distributing spam for male-enhancement pills.

Posted by Annette King in Virus & AntiVirus News at 08:54