WinHound is a trojan, which silently installs itself to vulnerable computers by exploiting certain system or web browser security flaws. It can also be dropped by some parasites. Once executed, WinHound installs several other dangerous threats, changes the Internet Explorer default home page and the desktop wallpaper. The new wallpaper warns the user that the system is infected with spyware and asks to download and install WinHound, which is a corrupt illegally distributed anti-spyware program. The modified start page may redirect the user to insecure advertising web sites. The trojan can use a rootkit to cloak its files, running processes and other related objects. WinHound automatically runs on every Windows startup.