It looks like a porn-propagating browser hijacker first spotted last summer is a little more mischievous than first believed. Known as CoolWebSearch (CWS), this little pest is turning an awful lot of computers into porn shows that leave their unsuspecting users bewildered as to how their browsers went from mild enough one minute to chock full of erotica faster than the speed of light.
According to Wired, a CWS-infected machine only begins by getting slammed with a continuous assault of porn pop-up ads, performing a number of aggravating functions like added a hundred or more bookmarks for porn sites to the user's bookmarks or favorites on their browsers of choice. And CWS is also known to slow down a computer's performance or even to freeze it, crash it, or randomly reboot it, Wired said.
"A few versions of CWS can add Websites to Internet Explorer's 'trusted sites' zone," the magazine continued, "which allows those Websites to install new programs on the infected PC without the computer owner's knowledge or permission. Several CWS variants are capable of automatically self-updating their programming code."
Microsoft Internet Explorer seems to be a particular CWS target, though other reports have suggested that holes in Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine are also prone to CWS invasions. And the bug is also believed to be installed on occasion by users themselves, who mistake it for a game, a search tool, or other kinds of purportedly vital plugins needed for running certain programs or viewing certain Websites.
Adding to the dismay about the bug is the existence of a search engine which calls itself Cool Web Search, which some believe separates the three words that compose its name in a bid to keep itself distanced from the pestiferous browser hijacker it insists it had nothing to do with creating or propagating.
"Cool Web Search is a Pay-Per-Click search engine," the company says on its own Website. "We started working with affiliates in 2001 and we now have an excellent affiliate network. If you get a lot of visitors on your Website, we will pay you 50 percent for each search that your visitors make on our search engine. We also will pay you 5 percent of the revenues earned by every Webmaster you referred to us."
But the company has acknowledged that some of its affiliates might have had a hand in creating the CWS hijacking bug, possibly as a way to add a little strong-arm technique to collecting both the flat $2 Cool Web Search processing fee per check and $35 fee for each wire transfer.
