H. D. Moore, creator of the Metasploit hacking tool, has crafted a search engine that finds malicious software using queries on Google. This "Malware" search engine finds Web sites hosting malicious files after a person enters the name of a virus or Trojan horse.
To find the malicious software the tool uses a fingerprint
of the executable and then searches for it. However, those who do try it won't find much. Google has
not indexed most malware yet and the signature database is still very small,
according to the Malware search site.
Launch of the site comes shortly after researchers at Websense Security Labs said they had been able to find thousands of examples of malicious code using Google's search technology.
Most of what Websense found were malicious files posted to newsgroups with false names, designed to trick a user.
Being able to find malicious software on Google shows the
potential to embed strings within binaries that
match search terms in order to dupe users into running malicious code,
Websense said in an alert last week.