Windows computers with fast connections are being hijacked and used as temporary host sites.

“More than a thousand unsuspecting Internet users around the world have recently had their computers hijacked by hackers, who are using them as pornographic Web sites,” reports John Schwartz for The New York Times.

“The hijacked computers, which are chosen by the hackers apparently because they are linked by high-speed connections to the Internet, are secretly loaded with a software program that makes them transmit explicit Web pages advertising pornographic sites and offers to sign visitors up as customers, according to computer security experts,” Schwartz reports.

“Unless the owner of the hijacked computer is technologically sophisticated, the activity is likely to go unnoticed. The program, which downloads the pornographic material to the usurped computer only briefly to allow visitors to view it, is invisible to the computer’s owner. It apparently doesn’t harm the computer or interfere with its normal operation,” writes Schwartz.

Macintosh computers are unaffected.

Full article here.