Warning over Google mis-spelling scams
29 April 2005
Web users are warned to take care when typing Google's domain name into their computer, as mis-spelling the search engine's domain name can reportedly take net surfers to fake sites that can lead to PCs being infected by Trojans or viruses.
Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure claims that the name googkle.com name has been purchased and scammers have built a site packed with web viruses.
F-Secure visited the site, owned by people with Russian-sounding names, two pop-up windows appeared with redirects to third-party sites loaded with malicious scripts. Two of the downloads, entitled "pop.chm" and "ddfs.chm" file, used using exploits and contain exploits themselves to run embedded executable files.
"One of the Web pages of the 'toolbarpartner.com' website downloads a file named 'pic10.jpg' using an exploit. This JPG file is actually an executable that replaces [the] Windows Media Player application," F-Secure said in a statement.
Security researchers warned that the Googkle.com site intends to take advantage of sloppy typing and infect users' computers and F-Secure strongly advises people not to go to Googkle.com.
Google has refused to comment on the report, but the company has taken action in the past against sites attempting to take advantage of mistyping errors.
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