Google and Yahoo Search Redirected

Over the weekend, Google and Yahoo searches were all redirected to some shopping and porn sites on one of the laptops. Tried various anti malwares (AVG, Spyware Terminator, Adware) to no avail. Finally, I found that system32/drivers/etc/hosts file was modified and a long list of Google and Yahoo domains got redirected to various sites. But the hosts file was locked. It can not be modified or deleted although it can be renamed. Rename the hosts file fixed the problem. I also took the precaution to make the hosts file read only hoping it won’t get modified again.

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