Trojan Horse targets Google Adsense

dorkygeek writes "The Register reports that nogoodniks have developed a Trojan horse program that produces fake Google ads posing as the real thing. The as-yet unnamed Trojan replaces legitimate ads served via Google AdSense with promos for penis pills, porn sites and the like. Techshout says the Google AdSense team confirms 'that these are fake Google ads, formatted to look like legitimate ads. We agree that this phenomenon is likely the result of malicious software installed on your computer.'"

Comments

In other words...

[Evro]

... spyware/adware does bad things to your PC. /yawn

A reminder

[Randall311]

Don't visit untrusted pr0n sites on a Windows machine. Make a Linux partition for such things.

More Likely Conspiracy

[twitter]

If you wanted to blame someone other than spammers, try Microsoft. They have the history, motive, means and opportunity.

History. Can you find a dirtier bunch outside jail? Start with an OS made by people who consider your desktop something they can use to sell advertising space to the highest bidder. Couple that with M$'s notorious efforts to discredit previous competitors and penchant for lying about it with very expensive PR campaigns. From bogus error messages for competitor's programs to fake letters to lawmakers, M$ has done it all. There's no technically competent person who would put any dirty trick beyond M$.

Motive. They hate Google. Google is a double competitive threat to them. Google has, for a long time, been a better technical resource than Microsoft's or anyone else's manuals and resource pages. The is especially true for free software issues. Now they Google is moving into territory M$ thinks they own. The hatred is personal, with people like Steve Balmer throwing chairs and Bill Gates saying sour things when asked questions. It's weird but that's how control freaks act. This little trojan attacks Google's credibility and strikes at one of their funding mechanism.

Means. M$ has money and knowledge.

Opportunity. M$ has extensive computer networks. They can make these things themselves or pay other to do so anytime.

Now nuts. It's much easier to think that this is yet another spamming tool that seeks the weakest and most widely dispersed target, M$'s crappy OS. Yet successful another high profile attack is not what M$ wants. Nor can they really want to destroy the world of online advertising. M$ wants to sell server software themselves.