cant access search engines

rather strange problem here

windows XP, IE all updated, DSL shared with D-Link router

cant access sites: google, altavista, lycos

yahoo will load but time out when i actually do a search

these seem to be the only sites not working

any ideas?

http://www.google.com/search?q=trojan.qhosts

this one tells you about it..

http://securityresponse.symantec .com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.qhosts.html

scroll down, it points all search engines to another site..

<IP address specified in the batch file> elite
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.google.akadns.net
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.google.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> google.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.altavista.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> altavista.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> search.yahoo.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> uk.search.yahoo.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> ca.search.yahoo.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> jp.search.yahoo.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> au.search.yahoo.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> de.search.yahoo.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> search.yahoo.co.jp
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.lycos.de
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.lycos.ca
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.lycos.jp
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.lycos.co.jp
<IP address specified in the batch file> alltheweb.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> web.ask.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> ask.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.ask.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.teoma.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> search.aol.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> www.looksmart.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> auto.search.msn.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> search.msn.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> ca.search.msn.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> fr.ca.search.msn.com
<IP address specified in the batch file> search.fr.msn.be
<IP address specified in the batch file> search.fr.msn.ch


Look in your hosts file (search for "hosts" in c:\) first, also you need to remove the trojan, I think that page has detailed instructions.

There are now patches to address this vulneurability, 828750 on Windows update (Dated Oct 3) for Internet Explorer. Note that it won't remove the installed malware if it's already there.