Study Notes Decline in Internet Spyware

Zoner12 writes "LiveScience magazine is running an interesting article about a new study detailing the extent and seriousness of spyware on the Internet, finding that it is still prevalent but declined significantly. The scary statistic is that 1 in 62 websites visited distributes malware. Kind of disheartening that this is a decline."

Comments

Interesting view on market self-regulations

[dada21]

Whenever we find something new, we look to how we can make our lives better with it. Some people can use this new product or service to save them time or money, and others will use this new product or service to directly make money. Look at the TV, the VCR and now the Internet.

I truly believe that Spyware has always had a market provision for it -- to find a way to capitalize on this "new" medium. Initially spyware may have been created by the big media companies -- Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve and the rest. They never had any opportunity to really sell the informaion of their users, so most of them gave up the flagrant "violations" of user privacy. Of course ISPs likely still have ways to make money on user information, but not like they thought they would.

Spyware was then taken over by individuals and foreign companies who might have been duped into thinking there was a profit. Most spam comes in from out of the U.S., but the value of spam has decreased majorly in the last year -- not due to laws or government regulations but through the end user finding ways to avoid even seeing spam. I think by next year spam will decrease greatly and in the next 5 years we'll have forgotten it entirely.

Spyware is now on that last phase, as well. With firewalls and spyware-detecting software, the power of spyware is decreased majorly. As operating systems are released that are aware of spyware and the implications of being known as a spyware-enabling operating system, manufacturers will take a big step in combating spyware before the fact, rather than after the fact. Yet the spyware will be beaten down by market choices not by government action or mandates.

By the time the law is created, it is already outdated. 10 years from now SPAM and spyware laws will still be on the books, but the market will have provided users with the proper way to fight it. As the next generation of users is accustomed to requesting information in the the way they want it, spyware companies and spammers will have to find new ways to make a profit: they won't be able to trick the next generation as easily.

Yet along with the market ending spyware, the market also seems to be trying to find ways to destroy the previous financial structure of information -- advertising. I use Google AdSense to monetize most of my sites, but it would never truly pay the bills. If I didn't have people volunteering money, I'd have to look into new ways to pay for my time. I actually prefer not to charge for information, I'd rather get my thoughts and opinions out in the market so that I can back up my billable rate by offering people the knowledge that I spend a lot of time researching my businesses. Having to find a new way to pay for media you want (TV, music, whatever) will be the unintended consequence of our market decision to get rid of all advertising and ad-ware type of programs. It'll be interesting to see how quickly the market recovers, though, as it always does: to give the best balance between the needs of party A (the producer) and party B (the consumer).

Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations

[jdavidb]

I blew up and started obliterating every add I could when Drudge Report went around Firefox's built-in popup blocking. Prior to that, I'd been blocking images from ad servers that served women in swimsuits (or less), since I won't look at a woman dressed like that unless I'm married to her. That meant I was missing most of Slashdot's ads.

I've never had any qualms about blocking the ads, and have been saying for a long time that we'll just she a shift in the "ecology" of website funding. Some will continue to be funded by ads, more will become funded by donations or subscriptions. Some will continue to be funded by private individuals or companies.

I keep hearing two-bit webmasters on slashdot prophesy Armageddon on the web because of people like me. Yet life has continued to go on, and it's nice to see someone putting out content on the Internet who does not think that ad blocking is going to cause the sky to fall.

I run only a handful of websites; one is supported by user donations, and the others are not yet big enough to need anything other than about $10/year from me.

I'm a much happier man since I started skipping all ads on the Internet. We also quit watching television other than recorded shows where we could skip the ads, or purchased movies with no ads (other than at the beginning, sigh...). Much, much happier, all around.

Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations

[AeroIllini]

Most spam comes in from out of the U.S., but the value of spam has decreased majorly in the last year -- not due to laws or government regulations but through the end user finding ways to avoid even seeing spam. I think by next year spam will decrease greatly and in the next 5 years we'll have forgotten it entirely.

Yeah, we may have forgotten about it in 5 years, but that doesn't mean it's gone away ... it just means we can no longer see it.

I'm not worried about how many spam messages end up in my mailbox; I have all kinds of filters and things set up to prevent that. What I'm worried about is the sheer amount of traffic being sent over the internet backbone fibers related to spam. All that data is clogging the system, even if filters at the message's destination make it so the data never arrives in a mailbox. Lots of this spam is being sent by zombie machines, and will continue to be sent long after spam is no longer profitable, which is highly unlikely to ever happen. Even a single purchase of a product justifies the cost of sending millions of messages.

If all the spam in the network is completely eliminated all at once, would the internet speed up? Would my downloads be faster, and my bandwidth wider, and my gaming lag smaller, and my surfing more productive?

How much bandwidth are we truly wasting on spam? I'd love to see some up-to-date statistics on this.

Re:Interesting view on market self-regulations

[Nahor]

the value of spam has decreased majorly in the last year [...] through the end user finding ways to avoid even seeing spam. I think by next year spam will decrease greatly and in the next 5 years we'll have forgotten it entirely.

Spyware is now on that last phase, as well. With firewalls and spyware-detecting software, the power of spyware is decreased majorly.

I could have said the same thing about viruses 10 years ago thanks to antivirus software, yet they are still there and more thriving than ever. I don't see why spam and spyware would be any different.

A decline in study notes...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else read the headline as meaning "there are less Study Notes included in Internet Spyware"???

Whenever I need to brush-up on my 19th Century history or Applied Calculus, I always read the source-code of spyware first...

I don't understand...

[MS_Word]

What does most spyware do? Show advertisements and redirect browsers? Use your pc to generate spam? Track your surfing and purchases online?

Are not all of these things in the end for comercial gain?

What companies profit from this?

Are any legit? Or do they all offer you penis enlargement?

If so why not name and shame them?

Of the ones that are a scam, who buys penis enlargment pills for 1.99 or cheap viagra? Spam wouldnt be profitable if no one bought any products that it advertises?

Any idea what percentage of spam emails are responded to?

Spyware v2.0

[Billosaur]

Just like all types of software, spyware will eventually evolve into new forms... assuming you believe in that evolution stuff... it may be declining now, but it will eventually rise in a new form.

Re:Spyware v2.0

[Daniel_Staal]

Spyware - and software of all forms - does not evolve. It is unintelligently designed.

No longer..

[Renraku]

Its no longer JUST email that we have to worry about, or downloading a seedy exe file from a porn site. Remember that flaw in Windows images? Yeah, its being used for spyware installation. What about the flaw in the way Windows handles videos that make it possible to insert executable code? Yeah, its being used for spywar einstallation.

Porn sites? Spyware.
Warez sites? Spyware.
Mistyped URL sites? Spyware.
Spam email? Spyware.

So if I break into your house in the middle of the night and offer you great savings on various pills, and you physically have to force me out of the house..is it still breaking and entering? I mean you wouldn't have 'let' me in if you didn't want my great offers!

If spyware/adware is put into ANYTHING that isn't an obvious executable file, it should be labelled deceptive and illegal. Whoever then created said product should be punished, or the website's abuse department should be contacted (spammed by unique sources) with requests to take it down.

Sample space....

[Asprin]

Pick the right sites and you can make it one out of three or one in a million.

Re:Sample space....

[Sporkinum]

Nice site.. it tried to install all sorts of nastyness. Kind of a case of the put calling the kettle black isn't it?

Not all spyware is bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spyware helped make my p3n1s bigger

Not that surprising

[kevin_conaway]

1:62 is not surprising at all when you consider the signal:noise ration of (good) information on the internet.

Almost 2% of websites distribute spyware!

[babbling]

1 in 62 is a lot higher than I'd have expected, but then again, I bet the unscrupulous sites that distribute spyware get a LOT less than 2% of all hits. I imagine the only unscrupulous sites that do get a large percentage of the internets hits would be porn sites.

Spyware down, but profit still there

[delicious]

Last I heard companies like claria are still making a mint.

Maybe the decline can be linked to the fact that now these companies are turning around and offering consulting for the problems they helped propogate?

Re:Spyware down, but profit still there

[og_sh0x]

Spyware is down partailly because part of the newspeak is not to call "legitimate" purveyors of surveillance software "spyware." This has, for instance, lead Microsoft to change the recommendation for such select pieces of software to "ignore" from "remove" and has decreased their listed severity rating.

Re:Spyware down, but profit still there

[just_another_sean]

I read an interesting (although also disturbing) article about this in Wired (the paper version). It was written with a "Who won the spyware war?" theme. It went into great depth on how some "advertising" comapany, whose name sounds like the other kind of crocodile, began, who they then rubbed shoulders with (and fought in court with), how settlements were reached, how non-disclosure agreements were signed and how, finally, a company just changed it's name to something that suggests "clear" or "clarity" or some such. Now instead of being a "scourge" and "plague" on the internet, they are the hottest marketing company in town.

But I still hate spyware and a reptile* in a dress, even a nice dress, is still a reptile* to me.

* (This reference to reptiles is meant as a figurative, literary device and the reader should not take this use to be an attack on reptiles in general. No real reptiles were harmed in the writing of this post).

Study Notes

[Tedium Unleased]

I wasn't aware there were any study notes for internet spyware.

Re:The Rise of Firefox

[gunpowda]

I don't think it's Firefox in particular - the study was carried out over '20 million Internet sites' and any executable files present. Sure, your typical exploit won't have an effect on computers running Firefox, but what's being tracked here is the presence of software rather than its consequences and effects.

I think SiteAdvisor is also a valuable tool in this context.

1 in 62? Distribution?

[gstoddart]

So, is this '1 in 62' figure just a meaningless aggregate of all domains they found? (ie. we tried 62,000 web sites and got 1000 hits)

I mean, if the sites which inject spyware are all warez/download/music sharing sites, I'd not be surprised.

If, say, reputable news sites (like commercial papers and TV networks) are included in that number, then it's a lot scarier.

There's a huge difference between knowing that in some of the "more shady areas of the Web" (as the aricle puts it) are the main sources, and knowing that even the good guys have this stuff.

When I go into the shady areas of the web, I know where I'm going, and I take much more precautions. When I'm going to a known, and assumedly benign site, I might be a little less paranoid.

Link to the Actual Study

[pavon]

Here is the actuall paper[PDF], at the University of Washington website.

I tracked it down because I was wondering if malicious cookies were concidered malware in the 1 in 62 statistic, which would make it not so surprizing. I actually found that the metric they were using was much more limited the blurb suggestests. The number of sites merely distributing spyware was actually 1 in 20. The 1 in 62 statistic refered to sites that went further and used drive-by infection techniques, ie sites that used a flaw in the browser to modify files or registry items when you visited the site! See section 4, starting on page 9 for detailed methodology.

Re:Link to the Actual Study

[eikonos]

According to the actual paper (on page 5), the level of spyware in general has not dropped.

"While the absolute number of spyware-infected executables dropped substantially between the crawls,this is due primarily to a single site whose number of infected executables declined from 1,776 in May to 503 in October. Except for that site, the amount of spyware we found did not change appreciably over the five-month period between our two crawls."

I call BS.

[TheGSRGuy]

I work in the tech support department at my university and EVERY machine that comes in here has spyware. I see about 15 students a week and everyone is infected. My removal method is so methodical that I'm bored to tears sometimes.

Re:I call BS.

[AeroIllini]

My removal method is so methodical that I'm bored to tears sometimes.

If it's worth doing twice, it's worth scripting.

Seriously, why wouldn't you write a Windows script that would intall all the programs, run all the commands, clean out the registry keys, and reboot every once in a while? Then when people bring in their computers, you just toss in the CD or USB key with the script, fire it up, and head back to Slashdot.

Re:The Rise of Firefox

[Firehed]

And to a (very) lesser extent, user knowledge. While most users out there still don't know the difference between [insert related metaphor], they're slowly becoming aware of the fact that clicking "Yes! Please install ShitSoft's Sp33dB00st3r" isn't the best decision. eDarwinism reigns supreme, of course, and people manage to learn from their mistakes. Not because of downtime or inconvenience, but if you're dumb enough to cause them, you're certainly not smart enough to fix them, and Best Buy charges out the wazoo. So when the ads cost the consumers money due to their own stupidity, they do learn. It's really the only way to teach people (at least in my not-so-lovely America), but if it gets the point across, then good.

Of course, FF taking ActiveX out of the picture certainly helps things. The problem is that most of the shitware-infested (spy/ad/"mal"/etc -ware) users aren't the type to go out of their way to get Firefox, no matter how much more incredibly convenient it is after the fact. Unless they spot and then make sense of things like the user-sponsored NY Times ad or the news reports saying "OMGH4XFFFTW!!1IERTEHSUCKZ!!1121", they're not even going to know about Firefox, much less actually make use of it. Basically, geeks are in-the-know, and they make the switch. Some of them tack up "getfirefox.com" printouts, others tell their friends, and basically what we end up with are the people who can already protect themselves getting even more protection, and get the best browsing experience, and everyone who was having the worst problems continues to experience those same problems.

Now I have neither tried nor have any intention of trying IE7 (Beta2), but provided that Microsoft were smarter about security, particularly regarding activex and... well... that's really the biggest problem, then spyware (and the like) will probably continue to dwindle. It's like spam - you can only buy so many different p3n1s p177z before finding out that the only change is your ePenis halving in length, and the real deal being just as unsatisfying as ever. Stopping user error before it's a problem certainly won't hurt things, but in the end, it's the financial damage done to the user that's causing the damage to be inflicted less frequently.

I can vouch for this...

[ktakki]

I've observed a decrease in the frequency and intensity of spyware/adware infections among my business clients and residential customers (my company provides contract network and system administration for SMEs but does perform some residential work). I think mid-2004 was the high water mark for malware and drive-by infections.

There's one reason for this decline that's not mentioned in the brief article (though it may be in the paper referenced): users are actually getting smarter. Strange as that may sound to your average BOFH, I do think that many users are growing a clue (and no 2x4s were even needed).

I know that almost every residential customer, as they're writing out a check for $100 or $200 for spyware removal, asks two questions: "How did this happen?" and "What do I do to keep this from happening again?". My techs and I are more than happy to answer these questions.

I've suggested a broad range of solutions (there's no one-size-fits-all answer here):

• Keep Windows and IE patched
• Use Firefox, unless it's a site that requires IE (e.g., Windows Update, certain banks, Quickbooks Online, which depends on ActiveX controls)
• If you're shopping for a new computer and aren't dependent on certain Windows-only software, try a Mac on for size
• Finally, stay away from the shadier sites and don't download "free" (as in syphillis) software unless you know it's from a reputable developer

This last one is tough: some seemingly innocuous sites try to force installs on you. For example, I was trying to find the name of a song by some band, so I googled a snippet of lyrics and hit the first site returned in the result. Boom! "Would you like to install Vomit Cursor? [yes] [yes]". A client's teenaged daughter wanted to download "Doll Buddy Icons" for AIM (something to do with Bratz dolls and people on your buddy list, I think). Wham, 450 malware objects installed in ten minutes (I tracked the source by comparing the file dates of the dodgy .exe files with the dates of certain cookies).

When you tell clients that there's no free lunch on the internet and that there are companies whose business model consists of taking control of your computer, you can actually see enlightenment happen. The heavens open up, angels play harps, and everyone is bathed in a warm glowing light. Pretty cool when this happens.

k.

Info on IE vs Firefox

[tito13kfm]

From the actual study

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/ spycrawler.pdf

For comparison, we also crawled and examined the new set of 45,000 URLs that we generated in October. During this crawl, both browser configurations observed a significantly lower number of drive-by download attacks than we found in May. For example, in May, 5.9% of the crawled URLs performed cfg y attacks and 1.2% of sites performed cfg n attacks; in October, these percentages dropped to 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.

We also examined whether the Firefox browser was susceptible to drive-by installations. We found that only 0.08% of examined URLs performed a drive-by download installation, but all of these required user consent in order to succeed. We found no drive-by attacks that exploited vulnerabilities in Firefox.

Basically what they did was see spyware that was installed by just visiting the website, with firefox no spyware was installed without any user interaction, and only 36 pieces got installed after the user agreed to it. This is from a sampling of 45,000 sites.

On IE, in October, 180 sites installed spyware with no user interaction, and 270 installed spyware with user interaction.

One of many reasons I use firefox.

seems somewhat incomplete...

[Avohir]

drive-by installs are certainly a major part of spyware distribution, but unless I misread the article, it left other concerns out, such as bundled installers, spyware distributed by spam, spyware distributed by bittorrent/p2p. Also, their sampling size for the sites was impressive, but I'm wondering how effective their analysis program is. Doing it automatically isn't foolproof

Re:Deep Cover

[slimjim8094]

Like a rootkit? Sony, anyone?

I say 2 years until any 12-year old script kiddie that took a Visual Basic tutorial online can download a .frm or .bas file from LimeWire, inject it into their project, and call a sub to hide it in the kernel. Then, we'll have regular spyware all over again, you just can't see the .exe

On the other hand, look at spam originally. Nothing prevented a mass mailer propagated with addresses harvested from websites. When it became a pain in the ass, stuff started blocking it. Programs were released to fight it, MTA's used a internet-wide blacklist, and users could tune the Bayesian filter by ticking a check and clicking "Report as spam". I don't even get spam anymore, not even on my well-known email accounts. Now, even the stupidest, most naive PC user won't read the "YOU CAN ENLARGE YOUR PENIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" email

Now spyware. Nothing fought that originally, and Mom and Pop would download an .exe if the website sugared it up for them and gave it a nice name. Now, nobody opens an exe file, mainly because of the "This will $*#( up your PC. Continue/Cancel?" messange XPSP2 gives. Everybody has AV software, and AntiSpyware software, because they buy Symantec's security ads.

Logically, anything unfavorable but profitable will be invented. People (including Symantec, Webroot) will find ways to fight it. Malware writers find ways to circumvent it. Companies sell products to remove, malware finds ways to hide.... Is this so suprising? All it means is that *ware has hit 1 of it's infinite lulls. We will NEVER see the end of spyware, because no operating system (yes, even *nix) that is even halfway functional is bug-free. Ever. And you *still* have the user element, tricking people into thinking it is necessary. What a load of bull.