But cybercriminals using fast flux take advantage of the option to move the physical location of their malicious sites every few minutes, making them much harder to block or shut down.
The search engine's Web-crawling spider now keeps an eye out for viruses and malware as it combs the Web, and shows users a warning page before allowing them to access malicious sites.
Google says those malicious sites are flagged in its search results 12 to 14 million times daily to warn users away from pages that could steal their credentials or infect them with malware.
FORBES: As Neighborhood Watch For The Web, Google Now Flags Nearly 10,000 Dangerous Sites Daily
Most reputation services for identifying malicious sites relies on a large install base of deployed appliances that report new URLs and their associated behavior back to a central database for automated inspection backed up by teams of researchers for those sites that defy automated analysis.
Turns out Google wanted to take care of that security vulnerability discovered in the browser that could allow keystroke capture when users visit malicious sites, so they put a cork in the RC28 delivery for a minute or two while they cooked up 29 to take its place.
ENGADGET: A tale of three firmwares: comparing the T-Mobile G1's RC19, 28, and 29 builds
They've worked to teach users to spot and avoid the "phishing" sites that spread malicious software and steal bank codes.
The trick could also be used to direct users to sites that install malicious software on their computers and could even intercept e-mail correspondence, Kaminsky says.
By the time the good guys had shut down Web sites hosting Sobig's malicious code at Geocities, Sobig already had gone through a sixth version.
According to Network World, some 22.4 percent of Google searches performed since June produced malicious URLs (such as fake antivirus sites or malware downloads) as part of the top 100 search results, as opposed to 13.7 percent in the second half of 2009.
ENGADGET: Report warns of the increased use of SEO Poisoning to spread malware
One reason that the phishers' tactics are increasingly effective: Instead of directly asking for bank account information in scam e-mails or on Web sites, cybercriminals are using hidden malicious software downloaded to users' desktops that monitors their online activities and records bank codes, Litan says.
But most of those sites still remain vulnerable to SQL injection--meaning the same group of hackers or a copycat group could use similar techniques to redirect the sites' visitors to another server hosting malicious software, Danchev argues.
The South Korean cyber investigation unit has sent investigators to the two file-sharing sites that are believed to have spread the malicious code, according to the National Police Agency.
On July 8, tech heavyweights including Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems teamed up to fix a fundamental flaw in the Internet, one that could allow any Web user to be invisibly redirected to fraudulent sites designed to steal banking passwords or install malicious software on users' PCs.
The continued malicious desecration of Joshua Tree National Park has now affected archeological sites.
These "zombies" are turned to a variety of malicious purposes, ranging from participating in denial of service attacks on Web sites to generating huge batches of spam e-mail.
He added that accusations on social networking sites that the culprit was a "local young man" were false and also malicious.
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