Larry Ingram found that out last month after spyware infested computers owned by Minnesota's Hennepin County. The uninvited software spewed ads for such companies as car maker Mercedes-Benz and online travel agency Travelocity.com.
Ingram, who oversees security for the county's 11,000 computers, said those companies might have relied — perhaps unknowingly — on unscrupulous advertising middlemen.
But the software that invaded Hennepin County penetrated more than 500 other workplaces. Those spyware ads hint at how much of the cyber-world's latest plague is financed in part by well-known companies.
Cash from blue-chip companies "drives much of the spyware polluting the Internet today," said Joe Stewart, a Lurhq Corp. security researcher who traced the attack back to the underlying ads.
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