Web security firm Websense is warning that scam artists have hijacked Google’s sponsored links to spread rogue anti-virus software. While this type of attack is not new, I was amazed to find how deeply Google’s ad program appears to be infested with this crud. Websense’s alert shows how following sponsored links generated by searches for popular software titles may not be such a hot idea. Their investigation of the sites served up at those links took them through what appears to be a long and convoluted effort to trick visitors into installing bogus security software. Websense discovered the scam after searching for WinRAR, a popular tool used for archiving files and folders. Interestingly, when I searched for WinRAR just a few minutes ago, I found two different sponsored links to sites that offered up a version of the program that came with a malicious keystroke-logging program attached, according to a