My Google Map Blog

The ZeroAccess botnet is a very widespread malware threat that has been infecting computers around the world for years. It's estimated that the current version of ZeroAccess has been installed over nine million times, with roughly one million PCs still infected.

The folks at F-Secure have plotted nearly 140,000 infections on Google Earth, based on the IP address of the infected computer, and the result is an amazing (and rather scary) map.

Along with the screenshots, F-Secure has also released the KML file so you can view it yourself (inside of this zip file, which also includes a CSV of all of the data). Be warned, though, it's a huge file and will take quite a while to load on your computer.

If you're concerned that you might be infected with this malware, McAfee offers a free tool to help you get it cleaned up.

Over the years, Google Earth has been used to help make some pretty neat discoveries, such as the thousands of ancient settlements that Dr. Sarah Parcak found last year.

Mashable has just written an article full of "amazing discoveries" that is worth taking a look at. These articles tend to show the same things over and over, but this one has a few new items I've never seen before such as:

The largest rain forest in southern Africa, discovered on Mount Mabu

Ancient tidal fish trap in Wales

It's really quite a great list. Be sure to view the full gallery on Mashable to see them all.