Google Wants You to Report Malware

darthcamaro writes "As part of its ongoing effort to keep a clean index Google is soliciting the help of web browsers to let them know when we find malware in the index. Celebrated Google hacker Johnny Long thinks it's a good idea, though he told the site Internet News that he doesn't think it'll stop real hackers. From the article: 'Most in search of malware for offensive use know the good stuff — it ain't distributed through public Web ... It's distributed through dark Web servers, peer-to-peer networks, IRC channels, torrents and the like. Google's efforts will not affect how skilled hackers get access to malware.'"

Comments

Not affect how skilled hackers get malware

[nurb432]

Nor should it. Google is now telling me what is moral and immoral and wanting to restrict access on their concepts of right and wrong? Who died and made them king?

Either they are a public company that should be considered a 'common carrier' or the aren't, which is it to be?

Re:Not affect how skilled hackers get malware

[webmaster404]

But for the Windows user, it could cut down MASSIVLY on the ammount of malware they get.

Re:Not affect how skilled hackers get malware

[quanticle]

This isn't about that. Google already has a service that reports and detects sites that try to phish your personal information or try to install malware on your machine. No, this effort is to try to purge the Google index of sites that sell malware creation and deployment toolkits to black-hats. IMHO, the original poster is correct. This wouldn't make it much more difficult for script-kiddies and black-hats to get their hands on malware kits, while making it more difficult for white-hats to find information about these programs.

Re:Not affect how skilled hackers get malware

[nurb432]

Personally, i feel that if they filter ONE item, EVER, then it blows the entire idea of them not being liable for future content. They really shouldn't be in the business of deciding what is ok and what isn't ok. Just report the links as is, and collect their revenue leaving it up to us to decide what is right and wrong.

Re:Not affect how skilled hackers get malware

[hedwards]

I will say it again, for the last time:. If they filter once, they should be liable for any future result. if they filter 'malware' results, but allow KP results, they should be put out of business. You cant selectively decide what you want to let thru then claim protection on the basis that you cant control illegal content. Why? Your argument makes abolutely no sense whatsoever. Of course they can filter one thing out, they could manually do it without any additional technolgy, by having a temp or intern manually typing in regexes. If they could be held liable for not getting all the kiddie porn off their results, they already would.

Regardless of your opinion, it is far easier to remove malware than it is to remove kiddie porn. For starters identifying kiddie porn requires in many instances knowing the age of the participants, while it is reasonable to assume that a 3 or 4 year old isn't 18, when you start talking about 14 or 15 year olds, it isn't necessarily an easy determination to make in large quantities. With malware, it is relatively straightforward to determine what if anything its doing. Some adult women are the same proportions as teenage girls.

The other thing is that there will always be malware, child porn and various other types of bad stuff on the net, the initiative here is to try and limit it. Google isn't going be able to stop linking to enough sites to stop it, but hopefully hit enough of them that people don't casually run into it.

Re:Not affect how skilled hackers get malware

[SnowZero]

None of these keywords will show up any pictures with Google Yes they do.

Just malware?

[rhizome]

I'm not a religious man, but I pray for the day Google allows you to blacklist certain domains globally (for your cookie or login). Malware sites sure, but link farms and pay-forums and gopher indexes and yadda yadda clog up so much, I'm thinking this feature would be akin to a Do-Not-Call list for the web.

Re:don't stop with just malware

[AlXtreme]

But then Google wouldn't be able to show you all their Adwords on those websites (and the ones they link to).

Why do you think Google isn't doing anything against link-farming? Because they merely have to act ignorant and rake in the cash. Vote with your feet and use a different search engine (or meta-searchengine like clusty), diversity is good.