Here’s an “of course” idea:

By taking advantage Google’s binary search capability, Websense has created new software tools that can sniff out malware using the popular search engine. Websense researchers Googled for strings that were used in known malware like the Bagel and Mytob worms and have uncovered about 2,000 malicious Web sites over the past month, according to Dan Hubbard, senior director of security and research with Websense.

Google’s Binary Search Helps Identify Malware Thousands of malicious Web sites pinpointed thanks to a little-known capability in Google’s search engine. Robert McMillan, IDG News Service Friday, July 07, 2006

It’s astonishing nobody thought of that before. It’s good that Dan Hubbard and Websense did.

The article also quotes somebody that says that miscreants fiddling keywords to con users into downloading malware is old hat, because “most Web surfers are smart enough to avoid” it. Yet it only takes a percent of users to make it worth the miscreant’s while.

-jsq