Desktop Search Tools Will Help Virus Writers

An anonymous reader writes "With desktop search tools all the rage, ZDNet is reporting that virus writers could take advantage of the technology to produce more efficient malware. "Any software that can index and capture data on a users PC will be subject to virus and Trojan exploits. It is just a matter of time," said an analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "

Comments

Re:Please.. don't shoot the messenger

[uptownguy]

Desktop search is only exposing a weakness that is already there as it can only index stuff it has permission to index.

I understand that this is technically true -- but did you know Google Desktop Search can do some pretty nasty things -- things like indexing all of the Word files on your computer? If one of them happens to be password protected, you click on the link and it asks for the password. But if you click on CACHED copy -- poof, there is the entire document, right there in your web browser. Whoops. Don't even get me started on cached copies of deleted files...

Google Desktop Search is powerful -- and is only indexing what is already there, true, true, all true...but still -- when it gets easy enough that someone like me can quickly and easily poke around and look at things I'm not supposed to... well, that's scary.