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Criminals Prefer Firefox, Opera Web Browsers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the choosy-criminals-choose-chimera dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers at Purewire have leveraged vulnerabilities in malware infrastructure to track the criminals behind it. In a three-month long project, they used security flaws in exploit kits to get operators to expose themselves (Obnoxious interstitial ad between link and content) when they access the kits' admin control panels. Data collected shows that 50% of those tracked use Firefox, while 25% use Opera."

2 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So the story is.. by Enderandrew · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Real hackers use butterflies.

    http://xkcd.com/378/

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  2. Re:Not surprising... by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: -1, Redundant

    This just means that malware writers understand that Internet Explorer has more vulnerabilities to exploit, so they don't use it themselves.

    No.

    It means they need tools that won't get eaten by their own malware when they want to examine it or open a command-and-control connection. So they opt for a browser that can be configured to be immune.

    It probably also means they don't write malware that would attack their own browser configuration - probably something like FF with noscript. That's a bonus security feature for FF and Opera.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way