A new Trojan Horse is incorporating itself in Google AdSense. The Trojan downloads itself on a user’s computer and replaces original Google AdSense ads with its own similar looking ads.


A new Trojan Horse is incorporating itself in Google AdSense. The Trojan downloads itself on a user’s computer and replaces original Google AdSense ads with its own similar looking ads. The Trojan ads look like the legitimate AdSense ads.

When the user clicks on the malicious ad, he is redirected to three different web pages, one after the other. Finally the user finds himself on a webpage with more ads and links to more ads.

Rahul Bangera, an Indian Web Publisher, who discovered the Trojan program and contacted Google AdSense, said, “There is a bug in the Trojan Horse which converts Google and Firefox referral graphic buttons into text links. Contrary to the normal Google ads, which have some correlation to the content on the web page, these malicious ads had no content that was remotely similar to the pages to which they had been attached.” [Source]

Many of the ads were about banned content by Google AdSense, like online gambling.

The Google AdLink ads are not affected. The Trojan only attacks small publishers.

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