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Report: Google leads Bing, Yahoo!, and Twitter -- in malware distribution
When you're the big dog, evildoers are more likely to target you with their nefarious schemes. That's certainly the case with desktop malware and Windows -- it's the most popular computing platform by a wide margin, so it gets the most attention from malware developers.
The same is apparently true for Google when it comes to distributing malware. In a recent report, Barracuda Labs found that Google (unwittingly, of course) passes out more malware than Bing, Yahoo, and Twitter combined -- about twice as much as all three put together.
Since Google dominates search, it only makes sense that malware distributors would do their best to invade its results. Interestingly, Barracuda's report states that only 2% of the malware they collected was 0-day -- the other 98% was previously identified. If that's the case, perhaps Google could (and should) be doing more to ensure known malicious links are uprooted more quickly.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments!
[via Help Net]
The same is apparently true for Google when it comes to distributing malware. In a recent report, Barracuda Labs found that Google (unwittingly, of course) passes out more malware than Bing, Yahoo, and Twitter combined -- about twice as much as all three put together.
Since Google dominates search, it only makes sense that malware distributors would do their best to invade its results. Interestingly, Barracuda's report states that only 2% of the malware they collected was 0-day -- the other 98% was previously identified. If that's the case, perhaps Google could (and should) be doing more to ensure known malicious links are uprooted more quickly.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments!
[via Help Net]
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsAemonyJul 29th 2010 10:59AM
I would otherwise think it was due to AdWords being the biggest and all. Oh well, at least this gives Google a reason to get money from antimalware firms. "We distribute the malware so you have anything to protect!"
216Jul 29th 2010 11:00AM
Where's Facebook on that list?
And I've always thought the Google should partner with some company to help filter out bad links on their site. Avast, Avira, ESET, etc. Then they can filter out links and whatnot automatically before someone even has a chance to click on it. Also, Google should have some kind of WOT feature built in to help warn users of bad links in advance (before a security company can find it)
I'm pretty sure that MS is smart enough to eventually fuse MSE's anti-malware/virus engine into Bing so it can protect users, but the anti-phishing/fake website part will be another issue.
kojo87Jul 29th 2010 1:56PM
i was wondering that as well. if your are going to compare one social network to a bunch of search engines you should probably include Facebook.
guelthJul 29th 2010 12:25PM
This could help with Google's Chrome browser and entry into the OS market.
DrakkenfyreJul 29th 2010 12:42PM
Google doesn't help by not screening their ad purchasers better. You can see sponsored results all the time that lead to malicious sites.
Matan MatesJul 29th 2010 3:08PM
Bing causing 5% of the infections makes sense because that about the amount of market share they have.
Ariel HorwitzJul 29th 2010 10:34PM
Wow, I never thought about that. That's pretty interesting.
Boy am I glad none of this is relevant to me. I don't have any security software on my machine running an administrator account, I just have a pair of eyes and some modern common sense!
And, please... Don't anybody mention Google partnering up with any such security firm... Those klutzes couldn't do such a thing for the life of them. I trust Google's engineers can find as much of a solution as is possible. The rest is up to the measure of savvyness of the end user. As much as Avast, Avira, ESET, etc. can't protect a naive and careless user and his desktop, they couldn't do it on the internet. WOT sounds like the best idea out there, the kind of thing I'm sure is baked within Google's stack somewhere.
2late2dieJul 30th 2010 6:38AM
It would be more interesting to see how that graph would look if they were to show relative percentages I wonder.