Anonymous

Alberta Canada

Computer Customer Support

Perhaps the hosts file system needs to be updated. While it has been in use likely since the earliest days of the internet, the fact that it is a simple flat file opens it to these kinds of attacks. I can't count the number of times I've been dealing with a customer over the phone and they have a virus or spyware/adware that has modified the hosts file.

It won't even be enough to write protect the hosts file because write protection can be change programatically. You can get a number of utilities that will tell you when the hosts file has been modified or possibly even warn you when a program is trying to modify it.