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Google to be Our Web-Based Anti-Virus Protector ?
cyberianpan writes "For some time now, searches have displayed 'this site may harm your computer' when Google has tagged a site as containing malware. Now the search engine giant is is further publicizing the level of infection in a paper titled: The Ghost In The Browser. For good reason, too: the company found that nearly 1 in ten sites (or about 450,000) are loaded with malicious software. Google is now promising to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious - with its powerful crawling abilities & data centers, the company is in an excellent position to do this. 'As well as characterizing the scale of the problem on the net, the Google study analyzed the main methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages. It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets. Widgets are small programs that may, for example, display a calendar on a webpage or a web traffic counter. These are often downloaded form third party sites. The rise of web 2.0 and user-generated content gave criminals other channels, or vectors, of attack, it found.'"
When I was living at home my sister must've found every last one of them. She was terrible for breaking the computer.
-Xoltri
This is potentially a very useful service but not all URLs we visit are from Google searches, some we still type in others as links from pages. However could we soon expect a Firefox add in that will filter all http requests through Google ? So then our new overlords will indeed know everything about our web-habits ?
Hax-fu?
I surf almost exclusively in Windows, using IE (IE6 + XP Pro on Desktop, IE7 + Vista on laptop) with no protection, and I've not had an issue with malware in years. But most people's browsing habits aren't quite like mine.
One other effect I can see this having, is let's say www.bigcompanyhere.com gets tagged as being potentially harmful. Now Google has done them a favor by alerting them to a security problem, which they can then address, and are likely to do so much quicker to try and minimize damage to their image.
I'm fairly interested to see how this plays out.
McAfee SiteAdvisor already does this for Google search results pages. This is nothing new. Its a FF extension and works well, though lately it has pointed out that proxy servers are trying to steal my identity when I try to use them.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Instead of just flagging sites for users, they should first add the detailed information to the Google Webmaster Tools. If it's third party software that's the problem inform the webmasters (at least those who use Google's tools) so they can take it down. Granted, it's their own fault for using third party software without enough investigation, but let them fix the problem before they're flagged for end users.
Developers: We can use your help.
I browse the internet on my Linux box, running OS X with MacOnLinux. On OS X I run VMWare player hosting FreeBSD, where I have all the options turned to OFF. That runs Firefox, which connects to a web-2.0 version of Lynx. I use this to connect to another site which manually lets me enter netcat commands and read the result.
My only complaint is that the pirates at Macrodobe STILL won't support my platform of choice! When will there be a flash player for people like me!
Beep beep.
Maybe, but any reduction in the number of infected PCs is win for the entire net.
A complicated error is indistinguishable from a feature.
Of course Google can protect us against everything and everyone (except the IRS, acne and that kid on the bike in Better Off Dead). They can do anything they say they can do ... and even stuff that they haven't thought of yet.
... on some site that rhymes with froogle.
Google is good, Google is great, and Google can do no wrong. Where on Earth did I ever get that pearl of wisdom? I read it on the internets, of course
It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets.
So google is going to protect us from webpages that use less than reputable advertising and widget services. Hmm, maybe google should go into the advertising and widget service, oh wait...
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Some people don't like, or cannot use, Firefox or Opera, plus sensible add-ons such as anti-phising plug-ins, noscript...
For example, one of my (very big) corp. customers is still running IE 7...
When I challenged the support guys about this, they said 'that's OK, we detect & block most things at the firewall'...
*sigh*
When I pointed out that:
1. That's bullshit.
2. Lots of their managers travelled, and surfed the net via unsecure methods like hotels using proxy servers, public wifi, they said 'that's OK, they can only access the intranet and internal mail via VPN'.
*double sigh*
So now I advise people not to click on URLs directly, or type them in, but go via Google. It's better than nothing...
Sony ha
http://www.usconstitution.net/
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Sigh, are basic editorial skills too much to ask here? (I know, it's a rhetorical question).
TFA does not say that "the company found that nearly 1 in ten sites (or about 450,000) are loaded with malicious software." This implies that there are a total of less than a half million sites that pose a risk.
It said that of the 4.5 million pages examined, "about 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads"..."
It also notes that "A further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer, the team report."
The problem is probably quite a bit larger than presented in the summary, even if one ignores the confusion between "sites" and "pages".
Three Squirrels
"Our Web-Based Anti-Virus.."
Is this not based more at phising scams, trojans and other exploits, rather than just virii?
What's the main source of virus infections? Anybody got some research?
I'm guesing it's swapping infected files, not visiting pr0n sites...
Is how they plan on allowing sites to redeem themselves or explain why they had the software there in the first place. If some spammer embeds some malware in a comments section, and you later find it and clean it up, will you be able to get back into Google's good graces?
I would hope that Google is looking at it more from the perspective of what is generally good for the betterment of the entire internet. Who cares if it directly benefits users of Microsoft product users more than Linux/OSX users? Bottom line, it is potentially one less infection, and one less pwned computer in a bot network. Less infections means less machines that are probing ports on random addresses, or used in brute force attacks, such as DoS attempts.
Don't get too tied up in the means, but rather what the potential end results, good or bad, might be.
It should be noted that the 10% of the web number is somewhat misleading--some comments seem to think it implies that 1 in every 10 pages one visits are likely to contain malware, or the like. Chances are, most of these pages are not worth visiting. This isn't in in every ten pages on yahoo.com or cnn.com, it's probably more like 8 in 10 pages on freekiddiepornplz.com and piratewarezserialzhackz.tv.
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Is that anything like Ghost in the Shell?
Do Linux or Apple users not mind when a bot-net army takes down a website they are trying to access, or clogs the pipes?
Do Linux or Apple users not mind all the spam to their inbox from hijacked machines?
Do Linux or Apple users not have to worry about some family member being taken in by a phishing scheme, hosted on a hijacked machine?
Do Linux or Apple users not mind tons of hijacked machines probing any SSH or other ports you might have open, looking for vulnerabilities or doing dictionary password attacks?
Less hijacked machines on the internet helps us all. Be you a Windows, Linux, Apple, BSD, or other user. Not caring about hijacked windows boxes because you are leet enough to use Linux is stupid.
it's harder to insatll malware on mac osx and linux then it is on windows.
So if you install malware on OS X or Linux, it's on Windows?
Not unless you have Wine running, too.
Here's the actual paper. It's a Usenix paper.
What they're doing is straightforward, and it's much like what many virus scanners do. First, they look at web pages to see if there's anything suspicious that requires further analysis. If there is, they load the page into Internet Explorer (of course) in a virtual machine, and see if it changes its environment. The better virus scanners have been doing something like that for a few years now, running possible viruses in some kind of sandbox. Although they usually don't go all the way and run Internet Explorer in a virtual machine. (Are you allowed to do that under Microsoft's current EULA for IE 7?)
The main problem with Google's approach here is that it's after the fact. They won't notice a bad page until the next time they crawl it. Bad pages come and go so fast today that they'll always be behind. As the paper says, "Since many of the malicious URLs are too short-lived to provide statistically meaningful data, we analyzed only the URLs whose presence on the Internet lasted longer than one week."
If Google implements this, the main effect will be to push attackers into changing site names for attack sites even faster.
It's all so backward. What we need is to run most of Internet Explorer in a tightly sandboxed environment on the user's machine, so that when you close the window, any browser damage goes away. That would actually work.
The malicious websites just have to skip the malicious code when the user agent string is google crawler. Are they going to change the user agent string? Will it be considered pretexting (the euphemism for impersonating)?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's very nice from Google or any other company to do so. But I think the solution is to teach people to surf smarter! I.e When they think they want to download a movie, there's no way to download .exe file! it's just plain stupidity. People need to read the messages they pop before they click yes on every message like : By Clicking yes 1Click-weather-adware-traybar will be installed.
One day people will learn to surf smarter, meanwhile, we will help them becoming smarter.
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!!!
Since morality is defined by the desire to limit human suffering, protecting innocent people who don't know better from malware is always going to be for a greater good. People shouldn't have to get their OS reloaded every few months.
Not running your choice of OS doesn't make them bad, and is a startling simplistic world view. There's no "helping Microsoft" here; they are trying to protect all Internet users. Since those people are using Google search, it's really more like trying to serve their customers better. Since all their customers are Internet users; so ask yourself: what is concern #1 amongst Internet users?
It is in everyone's interest to both secure Windows and stop malware in general, because an infected box can be used for things other than gathering info on the owner, which then affects people who have nothing to do with Windows.
For instance, botnets generally are made up of windows PCs, but are used to DDoS attack Unix webservers for ransom or political gain. They can also be used to attack network nodes such as vulnerable Cisco routers or corporate firewalls, it's a generic proxy model of attack which can be used for any number of attack vectors on any number of different systems. Recently there was even a browser exploit that allowed an attacker to use the box as a security scanner for vulnerable websites, this affected ALL systems, including OS X and Linux.
So, you can see windows is a huge part of the problem and everyone would be better off if it died, but it benefits everyone to stop malware, even if it means fixing problems Microsoft can't or wont fix themselves.
Tools > Options > Security > Tell me if the site i'm visiting is a suspected forgery, then the option check by asking google.
Checks if they are forged sites and so on built right in. I would suspect not long there will be an option check if this is a bad site.
the Google study analyzed the main methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages. It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets
I am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that a company that makes money selling ads on other websites would want to highlight malware-spouting ads by other companies.
Yes, I agree that identifying these ads is a Good Thing. No, I don't think publicly-traded Google's intentions are entirely noble.
Regardless of whether not not this provides a "false sense of security" it is a good idea. It would certainly be better than nothing. It won't really provide a false sense of security anymore than a phishing tool bar, antivirus software, or e-mail filtering. Right now people search for stuff on Google and click the link. There is no false sense of security. People are already assuming the websites are safe. If Google steps in and says "hey, this site isn't safe", then at least people have advance notice and choice.
.js files or new obfuscated JavaScript. If they look for all of this and possibly analyze/process it, they can go a long way to stop this type of malware. This feature if implemented correctly is a win for everyone on the Internet... well except the bad guys. :)
I see references to common things like widgets, but I don't see that as the most commonly attacked/exploited part of websites. Sure it's a real issue and is common (yes AdSense was hit with this kind of attack), but I hope they look for a lot more. One of the most common these days are the surprise addition to website sources of iframes with widths of 0. Or new and sudden references to
Neither, it is my honest opinion that microsoft should clean up its own mess.
Actually, I seem to recall that someone tried to run some Windows viruses in Wine.
Alas, Wine is not yet fully compatible with Windows, and it showed.
Ignore this signature. By order.
What about malicious sites (fake login pages) that disallow indexing/crawling via meta tags or robots.txt. If Google still searches/indexes that page then they break the rules for crawlers/bots and how does that reflect on them?
Also, what about content that's delivered on pages that require you to login first (poral, message boards, etc..). These are areas a crawler is not going to get to and completely miss.
Going back to the fake login pages bit, unless Google can index every site every day these fake login pages will be up and down long before the crawler reaches them.
The speed with which web-based worms, fake logins, viruses, etc.. spread is probably far far greater than the cycle time for Google to crawl the malicious site in question.
Where I could see some real value here is in using Google to detect vulnerabilities in existing sites (publicly available documents with sensitive information like CCs, open directories with long lists of mp3s or large videos, simple phrases that indicate some web vandal has hit the site like "X was here" or "hacked/owned/pwnd by X" etc. Focus on giving web developers a tool to evaluate their own site from a security perspective rather than worrying about the end user. Google's infrastructure really isn't built to work like that.
On that same note, just because there is currently not much malware on Linux or Mac, doesn't mean it will always be that way.
I'm fairly indifferent to which platform I use as long as it functions well. I'm also not the norm, but am privy to using many a malware free Windows Machine.
The more Linux distros are out there, the larger the market share, the more malware will target it. If you think you will always have a highhorse to sit on just because you run Linux or Mac, then I'll be there when you fall and bust your ass on the first widespread linux or mac malware invasion to point and laugh at you.
Malware developers are out to accomplish a goal, to infect as many machines in as little time possible.
So what makes more sense: Target Windows boxes which have lots of readily available holes to squirm through and a whopping 95% (maybe? I don't know for sure) market share?
Or target Linux and Mac, which don't have as many widely publicized holes, and only a measly 5% market share?
Its a no brainer right? But if the tables were turned, and it was Linux with the 95% market share, your sure as hell gonna be the first targeted.
The point is, why not be pro-active, and send a message to malware authors that we don't want it, and we wont stand for it? By integrating virus protection into the very fabric of the net, we stand that much greater chance that the next big malware outbreak (Whether it targets linux or windows) will be easier to contain, and ultimately will take away that which the malware authors seek: Attention and Distribution.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
What we need is to run most of Internet Explorer in a tightly sandboxed environment on the user's machine, so that when you close the window, any browser damage goes away.
What we need is for Internet Explorer to actually implement a real sandbox, and make all the attack vectors that involve ActiveX go away.