Google thwarts malware spread

Google on Wednesday warned some of its users of a piece of malware that was directing traffic through its system, following a routine check that uncovered "unusal patterns of activity" within its servers. Security engineer Damian Menscher said Google recently found "unusual search traffic" during a routine maintenance on one of its 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,'" Menscher said in a blog post. Menscher said that this particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers or “proxies." Google sent a prominent notification to computers it believes were infected. "Your computer appears to be infected ... It appears that your computer is infected with software that intercepts your connection to Google and other sites," the notification read. Also, Google encouraged users to run a system scan on their computers to possibly detect the malware and remove the infection. "We hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections," Menscher said. — TJD, GMA News