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NEW DELHI: Websense Web Security Labs has found thousands of pieces of malicious binaries (executables) Google’s search engine has indexed, mostly posted to newsgroups with false names that would normally trick a user, many were found on forum sites, as well as regular personal, educational, compromised, and underground sites.
“There have been a few blogs on the subject of Google's search engine indexing not only file types such as PDF and doc, but executable files as well,” Websense said in a statement.
It pointed out the instance of a Google query for "Signature: 00004550” resulting in numerous links to executable files.
Websense also found several pieces of spyware on poker and casino sites. Variants of the Bagel, and Mytob worms, various trojans, and many other malicious binaries were found.
Dan Hubbard, security and technology expert at Websense, says: “While we do not believe that the fact that Google is indexing binary (executable) file contents is a large threat, this is further evidence of rise in Websites being used as a method of storing and distributing malicious code. It should also be noted that although this is an useful tool for other security research experts to discover malicious code, the potential for malicious code authors to use it is also there”
The cause for concern arises because sites with malicious content (E.g. Spyware/virus infected files) might use this to have spyware executables indexed and when the user clicks the link, malware will be downloaded into the computer.
© CyberMedia News
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