Google Redirect Virus

The Google Redirect Virus is a real and serious threat to PCs everywhere. The main symptom of this virus is that users’ Google search results will be hijacked, and instead of being directed to legitimate sites they will be redirect to malicious spyware distribution websites selling rogue security tools and distributing viruses and infections. The Google Redirect Virus will sneak onto a PC, and once activated will make it nearly impossible for the user to use any search engine.

Despite being popularly referred to by its virus title, the Google Redirect Virus is more adeptly classified as a Rootkit or Trojan. This threat is caused by numerous types of TDSS Rootkits, some of which goes by the names of:

Alureon
Tidserv
Backdoor.Tidserv
Trojan:WinNT/Alureon.D
TrojanSpy:Win32/Chadem.A and many others

Google Redirect Virus blocks Google’s search listings and will show random pages which contain dubious listings and links from spammers and malware sites. In effect Google’s search results are hijacked, which makes it impossible for the user to conduct a search online.

After the user is redirected to a website unrelated to their initial search, some websites may use the user to generate fake traffic to boost their affiliate marketing payments, while others will try to trick the user into buying harmful rogue security tools such as:

Fast Windows Antivirus 2011 and
Windows Necessary Firewall

Another big problem with Google Redirect Virus is that it can hide from installed security tools. It will not be picked up by many security tools and thus the user may find it difficult to detect and remove Google Redirect Virus from the system. It does this by injecting itself into running memory processes and adding / deleting entries and values inside the registry, HOSTS file and DNS.

Some of the websites this virus redirects its victims to have been reported to include the following:

Clearask.com
Web-analytics.google.com
Brittaniasearch.com
Go.google.com

Google Redirect Virus will also hijack the browser to prevent the user from visiting certain security related websites and prevent the user from downloading malware removal applications. Users should not attempt to manually remove Google Redirect Virus as this may very well cause permanent damage to the system. Instead employ the removal power of a powerful and genuine security tool which will also protect the system against future attacks of a similar kind.