Wildfire Trojan warning

Malware authors are taking advantage of surfers' interest in the Californian wildfires to spread infections, security experts have warned.

Malicious web pages supposedly offering news of the fires, which have devastated areas to the north of Los Angeles and destroyed 53 homes, are actually installing Trojans on the PCs of visitors.

Surfers are finding the infected pages by searching the web, though it is possible the criminals could send out spam emails containing the links too.

"Be careful if searching for news of Auburn fires. Hackers have created malicious web pages which serve up Windows/Mac Trojans," Graham Cluley of Sophos said on his Twitter feed.



Cybercriminals creating infected websites in the hope of getting listed on search result pages is nothing new.

Last week, security firm McAfee warned that Katie Price was one of the most dangerous celebrities to search for, with one in six links in results pages infected with malware.

And infected sites that know whether you are using a Windows or Mac operating system and offer the appropriate infection have also been seen recently.