How Macintosh virus could be stealing $10,000 daily from Google
from the Toronto Star:
The hackers behind a virus plaguing Macintosh computers could be generating up to $10,000 per day off of Google advertisement clicks, according to security software company Symantec.
In a statement on their official blog, Symantec said the makers of the Flashback Trojan a virus that first appeared in March and infected some 600,000 Macs by early April have profited by targeting search queries made on Google through Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.
Its a Mac-attacking virus that Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, told the New York Times in April was the largest scale and most sophisticated attack on Mac OS X to date.
Flashback may reroute users to another page where they, instead of Google, receive revenue from the click effectively stealing ad revenue from Google. A Symantec analysis of a hijacked web search for toys found that the Flashback hackers were paid about 8 cents for the redirected ad click. .................(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1171626--how-macintosh-virus-could-be-stealing-10-000-daily-from-google?bn=1