Google Now Detecting Viruses

       


Google has identified a piece of malware that is redirecting unusual search traffic to its servers, prompting the company to warn affected users.


From the Google blog post mysteriously titled “Using data to protect people from malware”:

“Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results.”

Google’s Matt Cutts offers more detailson his Twitter account, apparently it only affects Windows computers and hijacks Google results. “That’s how we learned about it,” Cutts says about the “results hacking” thing. Google is recommending you follow the advice in its Help Center if you do receive the notification.




Google has never used its search engine as a massive malware warning system for users, although it did accidentally mark every website on the web as harmful in 2009.