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Criminals Prefer Firefox, Opera Web Browsers
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."
I am not sure that I would have liked seeing the operators expose themselves.
crim.. *cough* technically inclined people tend to use firefox and opera rather than IE.
Shocking!
I prefer Opera myself - does that now incriminate me? Or does it merely show that these criminals are security conscientious and knows that using IE on the type of websites they probably frequent would be like throwing stones at bees nests?
They did neglect to mention the most frequently used operating system. If it's equally divided between Linux, OS X and Windows it'd be hard for Internet Explorer to get beyond 33% to begin with.
This is obvious. People implementing malware and running botnets are going to be more technically capable than most. The more technically capable you are, the more likely it is you'll use Firefox or Opera. No big deal.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This just means that malware writers understand that Internet Explorer has more vulnerabilities to exploit, so they don't use it themselves.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Actually the article says 46% Firefox and 26% Opera. Did the submitter really need to round the numbers for the article summary, when more accurate numbers would be more meaningful?
If it was really 50%/25%, I'd suspect a low sample size, i.e. 1 IE user, 2 Firefox users, and 1 Opera user.
The guy who took the phone off my lap on the train uses Firefox as well. Right?
What's next, golfers prefer cars that cost more than $100,000?
Give me a break.
Most computer skilled people prefer those same browsers. Its what I've got open at this moment, FF and Chrome.
Live to be Moderated
What does this article even mean?
Tech savvy IT security enthusiasts prefer alternative browsers to Internet Explorer?
Criminals prefer Firefox?
Firefox users have criminal tendancies?
Firefox encourages exploitation of inferior browsers?
Or, Internet Explorer sucks.
What.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Is it the mouse-clicking or the keyboard-typing that requires more technical capability while using Firefox or Opera rather than IE?
computer people use Firefox because they know its good, others use IE because its all they know that exists
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
Of course they use non-IE browsers; they probably either spend considerable time exploiting IE, or at least are aware that IE is often exploited. I'm sure criminals who break into houses through open or poorly secured windows have wrought iron bars on all of their own.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Interestingly, Opera, which by some measures has only a 2 per cent market share, ranked second among the kit operators, with 26 per cent. "I think that's probably because operators have a familiarity with the web threat landscape," Royal told The Register, suggesting that many black-hat hackers take a security-through-obscurity approach to making sure they themselves don't get hit. "It makes them wary of using mainstream browsers."
Huh, and here I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, these hackers knew the security history of the various browsers and knew that Opera had a better security history than Internet Explorer?
One out of two criminals agree. Certifiably badass!
Life is not for the lazy.
Wow! No wonder it is so difficult to make money publishing on the Internet. Even an ad that goes away after a timeout, or can be skipped with a single click, creates angst amongst those who hold that information wants to be free. /. editors don't accept stories that include links to content behind paywalls, even if the information is really relevant to the /. community. Post a link to an article requiring registration and someone will copy the article and paste it as a comment (which seems like a pretty clear copyright violation). And now warnings are being given because someone out there is actually paying for the content that /. readers want to look at. Go ahead and mod this down troll/flamebait/overrated...but dang this obsession with not having to pay for any content, either in terms of dollars, registration, some time, or an extra mouse click, seems to be, well, obsessive!
I'm reminded of an old observation: whenever ice cream sales rise, so do shark attacks. So does eating ice cream cause sharks to attack you? No.
The observation that more Criminals prefer Firefox over IE, doesn't associate Firefox use with criminal behavior.
It most likely just means that there is a common occurence that causes technically savvy computer users to prefer Firefox.
People who build malware infrastructure are technically savvy, otherwise, they would not be able to understand and defeat technical security measures.
Non-technically savvy users often use IE because they don't understand the alternatives.
Also, they don't understand the weaknesses in IE's security defenses, the technical advantages of using Firefox (or Chrome) over IE, or the basic security principle that installing and using less-popular software (alternatives to the most popular option) means there are fewer people interested in devising a way to attack your software.
Eg Opera is not a very ripe target that hackers are highly interested in attacking, because it has so few users, it's a low value target.
Are we now to be harassed if badged-mongoloids see us on the internet and its not a blue "e" icon? /. story where one of them saw a student using a CLI
Akin to this previous
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
IE's lack of security being a reason for this. This is not true of recent versions of IE, and in fact, IE is sandboxed in recent versions of Windows, unlike FF and Opera. The Pwn2Own hacker winner rated it at 9/10 in security, and so on. I highly doubt this has anything to do with real security, more like hackers are faddish gullable kids who believe the "IE is teh insecure!" hype that the typical slashdotter believes. Ya mod me down, I don't care.
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
How many firefox/opera users are criminals? Probably a tiny, tiny percentage. Unless you count copyright violation, in which case everyone is guilty.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
If FireFox 46, Opera 26, that is 72. does that mean IE is close to 28? or are there other browsers that take up the rest ... the story seemed to lack that info?
Data collected shows that 50% of those tracked use Firefox, while 25% use Opera
Let me guess, they tracked 4 operators?
like any 733t H@ck3r would use Internet Explorer, and risk being kicked out of their group.
Did you check to see if they were even using Windows? Chances are if not then IE isn't even available to them, but Firefox and Opera are. Maybe that is because Firefox and Opera are cross platform and IE isn't (except for a Mac OSX port that is fugly, but then why install IE for OSX when Safari is way better?) available on Linux, BSD Unix, etc.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I'm surprised Opera isn't more represented, given the number of Russian cyber-crimminals. Opera is quite widely used in Russia. Opera once did a random street sampling in the eastern bloc after Google's video of asking people "What is a browser" in New York Square (to which people replied "Google" or "Yahoo" etc). They found most people knew what it was and majority used Opera:
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2009/06/25/what-is-a-browser-russian-edition
Which goes to show, those technically minded use Opera, which helps support my claims it is the better browser (for IT guys at least)
I.O.U One Sig.
Not saying that all Russians are criminals, but there's a big population there, and yes there are many cybercriminals.... this might explain somewhat the Opera numbers.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
No really? Probably they don't want their precious botnets be taken over and used "by proxy" (in both senses, actually...).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How do they test their activex exploits without using IE?
Water is wet, the sky is blue and we're all getting older.
A better reading could be "people that exploit vulnerabilities of browsers prefer to not use those vulnerable browsers".
In particular:
"People who create websites containing malware that takes over the browsing computer NEED to use a browser that is immune to their own takeover tools for their command-and-control console."
Jeez. Think about it a moment. How the heck are they going to work on the thing if it eats their machine when they touch it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
From the original article:
Royal was able to monitor the browser, IP address, and in some cases operating system of many of the operators of these sites by sneaking a line of JavaScript into the referrer fields of browsers he had visit the site. When the webmasters viewed the logs, their browsers secretly visited a website under his control.
Many, if not most of these crim... technically savy people probably deactivate JavaScript, and the most convenient way to do it is NoScript on Firefox. Which means that these statistics only take into account browsers with JavaScript enabled, which, in turn, means that the share of Firefox is probably much greater than 46%. Those who used Firefox with NoScript simply weren't taken into account.
Let's make asses of ourselves, and assume that the percentages would hold in larger samples. What would that tell us? Hmmmmmm. Maybe hackers know that FF and Opera are safer browsers than IE? Well, one has to ask, "Who would know better than a hacker?"
Alright, we've been asses long enough. Shitcan the silly assumption....
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Of the 15 sites tracked, only two were hosted in the same country where their operator resided"
15 sites? That means that these amazing numbers are from a 15 point data sample? Are you kidding?
Also FF and O are also the most easily extensible. Meaning you can write your own scripts/software/addons/etc to help you screw up pages you visit.
So malware authors use these two browsers more than internet exploder? Fascinating.
Just for the record: "1 in 4 hackers use Opera" story is based on total global sample of 15 hackers... :-)
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
Those who know how to use the net use Firefox or Opera.
browsers don't kill people, criminals kill people.
if we outlaw browsers.. hows that go?
running under a VM.
New Economic Perspectives
You think that only FF can turn of js...why exactly?
One that hath name thou can not otter
I've always wondered if someone could make a browser just for hacking. Like display POST data in plain text and let you modify javascript commands and change true to false and send invalid form data anyway, etc. That would be so unbelievably valuable but as far as I know, it doesn't exist. Is that isn't feasible and why has nobody ever done it?! Are rendering engines and javascript engines that hard to write from scratch? Wouldn't hackers just copy and modify existing engines?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
this research was somehow funded by microsoft ?
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
Firefox user = criminal
Iceweasel user = poser?
My sig is better than your sig.
I read the partent posting as "They're using these browsers because they understand the risks and prefer a less vulnerable browser."
My reply was intended to be "Actually, it's they have a specific NEED to be immune to the attacks as part of their operation: Their own malware would break them if they don't use a browser that's immune to it."
That's a very significant difference: Between preference and inherent requirement. TFA and many of the comments here are talking about preference, as if the malware authors were just using FF and Opera because, in their expert opinion they were cooler. I took the parent to be doing so as well. If I was mistaken than the post was indeed redundant.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe they're the same 4 guys that China just busted for pirating...
In other news, car thieves prefer exotic sports cars.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
Well, TFA itself had 46% and 26%.
What was the point of the rounding those to 50% and 25%? FFS, that's rounding two different ways on similar numbers.
It reminds me of a bash.org quote:
No existe.
Wow...you're right. That's WAY better than just using FF. And the best part is your links try to load scripts on my machine. Good work!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
...a guy by the name of Massad Ayoob wrote a book called "The Truth About Self-Protection." (http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Self-Protection/dp/0553195190) I recommend it highly, as one of the things he did was go over to the local prison and ask career criminals how they would go about protecting themselves from the same sort of people.
It's quite instructive.
Regards;
Criminals prefer cars to bicycles. Some even prefer the internet to the telephone. Most importantly they prefer the night to the day, as they are seedy folk after all.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.