Security researchers at Panda Software say they have discovered a new worm that generates a spoofed version of Google, the Web's most popular search engine.

The company's PandaLabs unit reported late Friday that it had identified a worm it has labeled as P2Load.A that creates a fake Google site, and launches adware on infected computers.

The security software maker, which is based in Bilbao, Spain, said that the attack spreads via peer-to-peer, or P2P, computer networks, specifically the Shareaza and Imesh programs.

Panda said that the P2Load.A threat copies itself onto the shared directory of the P2P software as an executable file named after a Star Wars-themed video game, Knights of the Old Republic 2, and lures end users into launching the virus on their machines using a faked error message. Once the virus has been sprung, it immediately modifies the computer's start page, launches the adware and spoofs Google.

As part of its delivery function, the P2Load.A attack modifies an infected computer's Hosts file so that when an unsuspecting user attempts to call up the search engine, they are instead diverted to the mocked-up version of the site, which Panda said was hosted somewhere in Germany. The fraudulent page appears as an exact copy of Google and supports all 17 languages that the search site is offered in. The virus has also been designed to redirect people who mistype Google's URL into their browsers, and will pop up if someone mistakenly types wwwgoogle.com, www.gogle.com, or www.googel.com.