Slashdot Mirror
Free Web Hosting a Fount of Malware
daria42 writes "It looks as if free Web space services are increasingly being used to host spyware, with Internet security firm Websense claiming more of such dodgy material was found on free hosting services during the first two weeks of July than in May and June combined. "These fraudulent, free personal Web sites have an average lifespan of two to four days, making them difficult to trace," said an executive from the company."
I'd say that the gov't should make these companies provide more authentication, but all it would do is prove a barrier against legitimate users while the criminals would just find a way around.
Outlawing free/homesteading sites would be likely be found unconstitutional in the U.S. and it would be a big fight to remove the safe harbor provisions for such sites to make them responsible for their users' malicious activities. I really don't know what we could do at a legislative level. At a personal level, I just refuse to visit any sites at angelfire, geocities, et al.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Next thing you know, the malware authors will just host stuff from infected PCs. I'm sure you can run a basic web server pretty easily.
I've been paying GoDaddy to host my Malware all this time?!
Spammers and crackers abusing free internet facilities?! Perish the though.
It's not just fake hosting services with malware and other phishing scams. It's getting so that one gets suspicious of any kind of new service that crops up on the web. The other day, I got excited seeing this service that promised to turn my blog contents into a printed book. I tried it, but then got worried that it was a phishing scam. And cancelled my attempts to use the service. What does mean for the promise of "web services" in general? More on the "blog into book" experience here: ahref=http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/s_11.htmlrel= url2html-21790http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/s_11. html>
Does anyone know how effective these schemes really are? Is there a study that measures how effective this is?
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
I was wondering, how do these people typically register accounts with free web services? Our site was having a problem with comment spam, so a CAPTCHA test tends to do the trick basically all the time. On the other hand, I've also heard about defeating the test by starting a porn site and then taking the image and showing it to visitors and basically just having them type the right answer and they get to see 10 pictures or something. What we ended up doing was a word riddle, like "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy ___s" or "3 + 5 = _" So if automated registering of these accounts is a problem, that's what I would suggest. Or you could surely just prohibit any files with a .bat or .exe or .whatever extension, and only allow .html, .gif, .jpg, .png, .wav, .txt, and a few more. I mean, if it's a free service, you get what you pay for. If you really need to host programs it shouldn't be too much trouble for you to buy something for $5/month. All in all this doesn't really seem like that outrageous of a problem.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
The dilemma is... if they got rid of free hosting. Then only those who can afford $$ monthly hosting bills can host. It's tough to shoot for democracy when only people with money can have a voice online. Let's not tear down the tree and the whole neighborhood due to a couple bad apples.
Does anyone know how effective these schemes really are? Is there a study that measures how effective this is?
The type-in is called a CAPTCHA (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart"). They can be fairly effective, but all they do is block robots from setting up an account. If I need 10 accounts, I don't necessarily need to automate it. CAPTCHAs are more often used effectively to block bulk botting stuff like blog spam, signups for free mail accounts, or other services (like whois at Netsol.com or Godaddy.com) prone to abuse and they can work well if well designed. But, again, they're to prevent robots from doing something, not humans.
Now, as CAPTCHA's get more obscured to try to defeat more sophisticated OCR elements, they become more difficult for humans to read. I recently developed one that I may use on some of my sites that uses identifying the contents of pictures. Demo here. Some of the people I've had test it said it was fun and they actually played it like a game.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Only people with money can get on-line. The vast majority of blogs and forums out there (Slashdot included) are populated entirely by people wealthy enough to afford an Internet connection of some sort. You don't see working-class people at the library updating their politiblogs because OMG did you see what Koz said this morning about the deficit what a total wonk I am totally trackbacking him right now!!!
For more information, click here.
Calling them a "Security" firm is whitewashing who they really are.
read the article on Censorware.
Actually, fount is the British and the old poetic spelling of font. When this spelling is used, it generally means a fountain, spring, or source. Using the modern spelling, a font refers to a basin for baptizing people or holding holy water, (sometimes also called a laver), although it can refer to the old useage as well. However, I don't think the word can be used to mean "plethora".
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
However, I don't think the word can be used to mean "plethora".
I've actually heard it a whole lot, but my parents were always big on vocabulary. At least in US English there's no "u" in font though:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=font
Specifically:
An abundant source; a fount: She was a font of wisdom and good sense.
(you have to look at fount to see that the "u" is deprecated)
I hope you're not serious.
People that don't know even the basics of HTML, or how to create a website shouldn't be allowed
You're right, only people who already know everything should be allowed to attempt anything. Let's keep math books out of schools and close the freeways, because only mathematicians and NASCAR drivers have any right to numbers and cars. I don't know about you, but my first site was almost 10 years ago on Angelfire, and it was crap as all of them are. Then I bought books, viewed source, and have done a number of sites professionally with all that fancy high-tech wizardry I never would have even known existed if I hadn't started somewhere.
Maybe this would also get rid of the million's of those MySpace or Piczo type websites that plague the internet with the writings of illiterate 13 year old girls.
Sure, their sites might be pointless and juvenile, but I can't remember the last time I spent an hour reading a site before slapping my forehead and saying "Oh, now I understand why this sucks, it was written by a 13 year old!" That just doesn't happen, because the only people who ever end up at those sites are the 13 year olds who write them and their other 13 year old friends. This "plague" does not affect most people in the slightest, and if it affects you then perhaps you shouldn't be allowed to use the internet because of a lack of basic navigation skills.
People can be so quick to discourage and dismiss beginners, it makes me wonder how anybody ever learns anything.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
Researchers have discovered that the Microsoft Windows operating system (all flavors) has been hosting spyware, virus and other malicious crap that comes off the Internet and spreads it to other computers attached to the same LAN at a faster rate than any other time in the last 10 years. Microsoft released a statement saying that Windows does it better than Linux and encouraged all users to immediately upgrade to Windows Vista. :P
John Leyden at The Register has a slightly different take on this story. Essentially Websense is a company trying desperately to sell its "security products" through a campaign of FUD and blatantly obvious "alerts". I think most people here see this as the latter, while most of Websense's target audience probably fall into the former target audience.