Istart.webssearches.com is a browser hijacker, which is promoted via other free downloads, and once installed it will change your browser homepage to istart.webssearches.com and default search engine to webssearches.com.
This in itself is not considered malicious as there are many legitimate programs that change these settings as well. What is considered malicious, though, is that it will also append the argument http://istart.webssearches.com to random Windows shortcuts on your desktop and your Windows Start Menu.

The Istart.webssearches.com homepage will display advertisements and sponsored links in your search results, and may collect search terms from your search queries. The Istart.webssearches.com hijack is used to boost advertising r ... Read more »

I upgraded my system to Windows 8.1 Pro recently and realized that there were 2 folders created in every partition of my drive. These were named as "$RECYCLE.BIN" and "System Volume". I wondered a bit, and then on googling, found that majority of the internet supported the argument that it was kind of a trojan and virus but I can't believe that as it was hardly 5 minutes I've had installed Windows 8.1. So I expanded my research a bit more. The final results were shocking.