Google search advertising links turned out to be a channel for Trojans to spread

According to foreign media reports on April 25, pervasive hackers recently targeted Google's search ads. Some hackers took advantage of a small flaw in Google's website to redirect customers to websites that automatically downloaded malicious programs through keyword advertisements.

In Google's keyword advertisements, anyone can buy a specific keyword. If the bid is high, it will be ranked first on the right. In addition, when the user puts the mouse on the link, the link URL will not be displayed in the status bar of the browser.

Recently, some hackers bought keyword advertisements for the organization "Better Business Bureau", covering keywords including "BBB" and "BBBonline", and also purchased keywords for "Cars.com".

Roger Thompson, a researcher at the security agency "Exploit Labs", said that once a user clicks on these ad links, the user will first be transferred to another hacker site before arriving at the correct site. This hacker site will be automatically downloaded and installed using Microsoft A malicious program with a vulnerability in Internet Explorer. Since users can finally see the correct website, they do not know that malicious programs have been installed on their computers.

It is reported that this loophole is an old loophole. Microsoft had issued a patch as early as June last year, but some computer users did not apply the patch in time.

Thompson said that some users often check the URL they want to visit through the status bar, which allows them to avoid some malicious attacks on the website, but on the Google website, the status bar does not display the URL of the ad link, which gives hackers an opportunity .

According to Thompson, at present, Google has removed related hacker links.

This is not the first time a well-known website has been used to spread malicious programs. Last summer, nearly one million Windows users were put into a Trojan horse program, and this Trojan horse was spread through banner advertisements of several high-traffic websites, including MySpace, the largest social networking site in the United States.