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Google Pages Used To Host Trojan Horse
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-06-19
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The security vendor Websense sent out a warning on Friday that Google's Web page hosting service, known as Google Pages, was being used to host a Trojan horse. It is believed the discovery was made before the malware's author(s) could launch an attack.
As defined by Wikipedia, a Trojan horse is "a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software." This particular program was a keylogger, which, as might be evident from the name, "captures the user's keystrokes." Financial information, passwords, or other sensitive information can be stolen in this manner.
Websense had this to say about the Google-hosted Trojan: "The file is packed with ASPack and is a banking Trojan Horse which is designed to steel banking credentials upon visiting pre-defined financial institutions sites." The company's solution was to simply block the website.
Google can't be blamed for the event-any free hosting service is likely to encounter such problems. Still, the search engine giant would do well to run some sort of check or scan on files as they are uploaded. Imitators (or even the same party) may follow up this first attempt with others.
In order for Trojans to launch, they require users to open an attachment, run a program, or click on a link, as the case may be. The Trojan horse on Google Pages was no different in this respect. And so while this new incident is somewhat disturbing, it shouldn't make individuals any more vulnerable than they were in the past. Just continue to exercise caution in your Web browsing.
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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